[See  p. 176 

MRS.  ALDERLING  CAME   OUT  WITH  A  BOOK  IN  HER 
HAND" 


Copyright,  1903,  by  HARPER  &  BROTHBRS. 

AU  rights  reserved. 
Published  May,  1903 


Questionable  shares 


W.E.Eowells. 


New  York  and  London 
Harper  &  brothers 
1903 


CONTENTS. 


lllf*   APPARITION 

TI1K    AMiKI.    OK    TIIK    1.oUI» 

THUtOU    U.NE    IIU-E    KHOM     lilt    DKA 


Kitt 


HIS    APPAKITION. 


HIS    APPAEITION. 


THE  incident  was  of  a  dignity  which  the  supernat 
ural  has  by  no  means  always  had,  and  which  has 
been  more  than  ever  lacking  in  it  since  the  manifesta 
tions  of  professional  spiritualism  began  to  vulgarize 
it.  Hewson  appreciated  this  as  soon  as  he  realized 
that  he  had  been  confronted  with  an  apparition.  He 
had  been  very  little  agitated  at  the  moment,  and  it 
was  not  till  later,  when  the  conflict  between  sense  and 
reason  concerning  the  fact  itself  arose,  that  he  was 
aware  of  any  perturbation.  Even  then,  amidst  the 
tumult  of  his  whirling  emotions  he  had  a  sort  of  cen 
tral  calm,  in  which  he  noted  the  particulars  of  the 
occurrence  with  distinctness  and  precision.  He  had 
always  supposed  that  if  anything  of  the  sort  happened 
to  him  he  would  be  greatly  frightened,  but  he  had 
not  been  at  all  frightened,  so  far  as  he  could  make 
out.  His  hair  had  not  risen,  or  his  cheek  felt  a  chill ; 
his  heart  had  not  lost  or  gained  a  beat  in  its  pulsation ; 


6  HIS   AFPA1UTION. 

and  his  prime  conclusion  was  that  if  the  Mysteries 
had  chosen  him  an  agent  in  approaching  the  material 
world  they  had  not  made  a  mistake.  This  becomes 
grotesque  in  being  put  into  words,  but  the  words  do 
not  misrepresent,  except  by  their  inevitable  excess, 
the  mind  in  which  Hewson  rose,  and  flung  open  his 
shutters  to  let  in  the  dawn  upon  the  scene  of  the  ap 
parition,  which  he  now  perceived  must  have  been,  as 
it  were,  self-lighted.  The  robins  were  yelling  from 
the  trees  and  the  sparrows  bickering  under  them; 
catbirds  were  calling  from  the  thickets  of  syringa,  and 
in  the  nearest  woods  a  hermit-thrush  was  ringing  its 
crystal  bells.  The  clear  day  was  penetrating  the  east 
with  the  subtle  light  which  precedes  the  sun,  and  a 
summer  sweetness  rose  cool  from  the  garden  below, 
gray  with  dew. 

In  the  solitude  of  the  hour  there  was  an  intimation 
of  privity  to  the  event  which  had  taken  place,  an 
implication  of  the  unity  of  the  natural  and  the  super 
natural,  strangely  different  from  that  robust  gayety 
of  the  plain  day  which  later  seemed  to  disown  the 
affair,  and  leave  the  burden  of  proof  altogether  to  the 
human  witness.  By  this  time  Hewson  had  already 
set  about  to  putting  it  in  such  phrases  as  should  carry 
conviction  to  the  hearer,  and  yet  should  convey  to 


HIS    APPARITION.  7 

him  no  suspicion  of  the  pride  which  Hewson  felt  in 
the  incident  as  a  sort  of  tribute  to  himself.  He  dram 
atized  the  scene  at  breakfast  when  he  should  describe 
it  in  plain,  matter-of-fact  terms,  and  hold  every  one 
spellbound,  as  he  or  she  leaned  forward  over  the  table 
to  listen,  while  he  related  the  fact  with  studied  un 
concern  for  his  own  part  in  it,  but  with  a  serious 
regard  for  the  integrity  of  the  fact  itself,  which  he 
had  no  wish  to  exaggerate  as  to  its  immediate  mean 
ing  or  remoter  implications.  It  did  not  yet  occur  to 
him  that  it  had  none ;  they  were  simply  to  be  matters 
of  future  observation  in  a  second  ordeal ;  for  the  first 
emotion  which  the  incident  imparted  was  the  feeling 
that  it  would  happen  again,  and  in  this  return  would 
interpret  itself.  Hewson  was  so  strongly  persuaded 
of  something  of  the  kind,  that  after  standing  for  an 
indefinite  period  at  the  window  in  his  pajamas,  he  got 
hardily  back  into  bed,  and  waited  for  the  repetition. 
He  was  agreeably  aware  of  waiting  without  a  tremor, 
and  rather  eagerly  than  otherwise ;  then  he  began  to 
feel  drowsy,  and  this  at  first  flattered  him,  as  a  proof 
of  his  strange  courage  in  circumstances  which  would 
have  rendered  sleep  impossible  to  most  men ;  but  in 
another  moment  he  started  from  it.  If  he  slept  every 
one  would  say  he  had  dreamt  the  whole  thing;  and 


8  HIS    APPARITION. 

he  could  never  himself  be  quite  sure  that  he  had 
not. 

He  got  up,  and  began  to  dress,  thinking  all  the 
time,  in  a  dim  way,  how  very  long  it  would  be  till 
breakfast,  and  wondering  what  he  should  do  till  then 
with  his  appetite  and  his  apparition.  It  was  now 
only  a  little  after  four  o'clock  of  the  June  morning, 
and  nobody  would  be  down  till  after  eight ;  most 
people  at  that  very  movable  feast,  which  St.  John 
had  in  the  English  fashion,  did  not  show  themselves 
before  nine.  It  was  impossible  to  get  a  book  and 
read  for  five  hours ;  he  would  be  dropping  with  hun 
ger  if  he  walked  so  long.  Yet  he  must  not  sleep ; 
and  he  must  do  something  to  keep  from  sleeping.  He 
remembered  a  little  interloping  hotel,  which  had  lately 
forced  its  way  into  precincts  sacred  to  cottage  life, 
and  had  impudently  called  itself  the  St.  Johns  wort 
Inn,  after  St.  John's  place,  by  a  name  which  he  prided 
himself  on  having  poetically  invented  from  his  own 
and  that  of  a  prevalent  wild  flower.  Upon  the  chance 
of  getting  an  early  cup  of  coffee  at  this  hotel,  Hewson 
finished  dressing,  and  crept  down  stairs  to  let  himself 
out  of  the  house. 

He  not  only  found  the  door  locked,  as  he  had 
expected,  but  the  key  taken  out ;  and  after  some  mis- 


HIS   APPARITION.  9 

giving  lie  decided  to  lift  one  of  the  long  library 
windows,  from  which  he  could  get  into  the  garden, 
closing  the  window  after  him,  and  so  make  his  escape. 
No  one  was  stirring  outside  the  house  any  more  than 
within ;  he  knocked  down  a  trellis  by  which  a  clematis 
was  trying  to  climb  over  the  window  he  emerged 
from,  and  found  his  way  out  of  the  grounds  without 
alarming  any  one.  He  was  not  so  successful  at  the 
hotel,  where  a  lank  boy,  sweeping  the  long  piazzas, 
recognized  one  of  the  St.  Johnswort  guests  in  the 
figure  approaching  the  steps,  and  apparently  had  his 
worst  fears  roused  for  Hewson's  sanity  when  Hewson 
called  to  him  and  wondered  if  he  could  get  a  cup  of 
coffee  at  that  hour ;  he  openly  owned  it  was  an  un 
natural  hour,  and  he  had  a  fine  inward  sense  that  it 
was  supernatural.  The  boy  dropped  his  broom  with 
out  a  word,  and  vanished  through  the  office  door, 
reappearing  after  a  blank  interval  to  pick  up  his 
broom  and  say,  "  I  guess  so, "  as  he  began  sweeping 
again.  It  was  well,  for  one  reason  that  he  did  not 
state  his  belief  too  confidently,  Hewson  thought;  but 
after  another  interval  of  unknown  length  a  rude,  sad 
girl  came  to  tell  him  his  coffee  was  waiting  for  him. 
He  followed  her  back  into  the  still  dishevelled  dining- 
room,  and  sat  down  at  a  long  table  to  a  cup  of  luke- 


10  HIS    APPARITION. 

warm  drink  that  in  color  and  quality  recalled  terrible 
mornings  of  Atlantic  travel  when  he  haplessly  rose 
and  descended  to  the  dining-saloon  of  the  steamer, 
and  had  a  marine  version  of  British  coffee  brought 
him  by  an  alien  table-steward. 

He  remembered  the  pock-marked  nose  of  one  alien 
steward,  and  how  he  had  questioned  whether  he 
should  give  the  fellow  six-pence  or  a  shilling,  seeing 
that  apart  from  this  tribute  he  should  have  to  fee  his 
own  steward  for  the  voyage ;  at  the  same  time  his 
fancy  played  with  the  question  whether  that  uncouth, 
melancholy  waitress  had  found  a  moment  to  wash  her 
face  before  hurrying  to  fetch  his  coffee.  He  amused 
himself  by  contrasting  her  sloven  dejection  with  the 
brisk  neatness  of  the  service  at  St.  Johnswort;  but 
through  all  he  never  lost  the  awe,  the  sense  of  re 
sponsibility  which  he  bore  to  the  vision  vouchsafed 
him,  doubtless  for  some  reason  and  to  some  end  that 
it  behooved  him  to  divine. 

He  found  a  yesterday's  paper  in  the  office  of  the 
hotel,  and  read  it  till  he  began  to  drowse  over  it, 
when  he  pulled  himself  up  with  a  sharp  jerk.  He 
discovered  that  it  was  now  six  o'clock,  and  he  thought 
if  he  could  walk  about  for  an  hour  he  might  return 
to  St.  Johnswort,  and  worry  through  the  remaining 


HIS    APPARITION.  11 

hour  till  breakfast  somehow.  He  was  still  framing 
in  his  thoughts  some  sort  of  statement  concerning  the 
apparition  which  he  should  make  when  the  largest 
number  of  guests  had  got  together  at  the  table,  with 
a  fine  question  whether  he  should  take  them  between 
the  cantaloupe  and  the  broiled  chicken,  or  wait  till 
they  had  come  to  the  corn  griddle-cakes,  which  St. 
John's  cook  served  of  a  filigree  perfection  in  homage 
to  the  good  old  American  breakfast  ideal.  There 
would  be  more  women,  if  he  waited,  and  he  should 
need  the  sympathy  and  countenance  of  women ;  his 
story  would  be  wanting  in  something  of  its  supreme 
effect  without  the  electrical  response  of  their  keener 
nerves. 


n. 

WHEN  Hewson  came  up  to  the  cottage  he  was 
sensible  of  a  certain  agitation  in  the  air,  which  was 
intensified  to  him  by  the  sight  of  St.  John,  in  his 
bare,  bald  head  and  the  neglige  of  a  flannel  house 
coat,  inspecting,  with  the  gardener  and  one  of  the 
grooms,  the  fallen  trellis  under  the  library  window, 
which  from  time  to  time  they  looked  up  at,  as  they 
talked.  Hewson  made  haste  to  join  them,  through 
the  garden  gate,  and  to  say  shamefacedly  enough, 
"  Oh,  I'm  afraid  I'm  responsible  for  that, "  and  he 
told  how  he  must  have  thrown  down  the  trellis  in 
getting  out  of  the  window. 

"  Oh ! "  said  St.  John,  while  the  two  men  walked 
away  with  dissatisfied  grins  at  being  foiled  of  their 
sensation.  "  We  thought  it  was  burglars.  I'm  so 
glad  it  was  only  you. "  But  in  spite  of  his  profes 
sion,  St.  John  did  not  give  Hewson  any  very  lively 
proof  of  his  enjoyment.  "  Deuced  uncomfortable  to 


HIS    APPARITION.  13 

have  had  one's  guests  murdered  in  their  beds.  Don't 
say  anything  about  it,  please,  Hewson.  The  women 
would  all  fly  the  premises,  if  there'd  been  even  a  sus 
picion  of  burglars. " 

"  Oh,  no ;  I  won't,  "  Hewson  willingly  assented ; 
but  he  perceived  a  disappointment  in  St.  John's  tone 
and  manner,  and  he  suspected  him,  however  unjustly, 
of  having  meant  to  give  himself  importance  with  his 
guests  by  the  rumor  of  a  burglary  in  the  house. 

He  was  a  man  quite  capable  of  that,  Hewson  be 
lieved,  and  failing  it,  capable  of  pretending  that  he 
wanted  the  matter  hushed  up  in  the  interest  of 
others. 

In  any  case  he  saw  that  it  was  not  to  St.  John  pri 
marily,  or  secondarily  to  St.  John's  guests,  that  he 
could  celebrate  the  fact  of  his  apparition.  In  the 
presence  of  St.  John's  potential  vulgarity  he  keenly 
felt  his  own,  and  he  recoiled  from  what  he  had  im 
agined  doing.  He  even  realized  that  he  would  have 
been  working  St.  John  an  injury  by  betraying  his 
house  to  his  guests  as  the  scene  of  a  supernatural 
incident. 

Nobody  believes  in  ghosts,  but  there  is  not  one  in 
a  thousand  of  us  who  would  not  be  uncomfortable  in 
a  haunted  house,  or  a  house  so  reputed.  If  Hewson 


14:  HIS    APPARITION. 

told  what  he  had  seen,  he  would  not  only  scatter  St. 
John's  house-party  to  the  four  winds,  but  he  would 
cast  such  a  blight  upon  St.  Johnswort  that  it  would 
never  sell  for  a  tenth  of  its  cost. 


III. 

FROM  that  instant  Hewson  renounced  his  purpose, 
and  he  remained  true  to  this  renunciation  in  spite  of 
the  behavior  of  St.  John,  which  might  well  have 
tempted  him  to  a  revenge  in  kind.  No  one  seemed 
to  have  slept  late  that  morning ;  several  of  the  ladies 
complained  that  they  had  riot  slept  a  wink  the  whole 
night,  and  two  or  three  of  the  men  owned  to  having 
waked  early  and  not  been  able  to  hit  it  off  again  in  a 
morning  nap,  though  it  appeared  that  they  were 
adepts  in  that  sort  of  thing.  The  hour  of  their  vigils 
corresponded  so  nearly  with  that  of  Hewson's  appari 
tion  that  he  wondered  if  a  mystical  influence  from  it 
had  not  penetrated  the  whole  house.  The  adventi 
tious  facts  were  of  such  a  nature  that  he  controlled 
with  the  greater  difficulty  the  wish  to  explode  upon 
an  audience  so  aptly  prepared  for  it  the  prodigious 
incident  which  he  was  keeping  in  reserve ;  but  he  did 
not  yield  even  when  St.  John  carefully  led  up  to  the 


16  HIS    APPARITION. 

point  through  the  sensation  of  his  guests,  by  recount 
ing  the  evidences  of  the  supposed  visit  of  a  burglar, 
and  then  made  his  effect  by  suddenly  turning  upon 
Hewson,  and  saying  with  his  broad  guffaw :  "  And 
here  you  have  the  burglar  in  person.  He  has  owned 
his  crime  to  me,  and  I've  let  him  off  the  penalty  on 
condition  that  he  tells  you  all  about  it.  "  The  humor 
was  not  too  rank  for  the  horsey  people  whom  St.  John 
had  mainly  about  him,  but  some  of  the  women  said, 
"  Poor  Mr.  Hewson  !  "  when  the  host,  failing  Hewson's 
confession,  went  on  to  betray  that  he  had  risen  at 
that  unearthly  hour  to  go  down  to  the  St.  Johnswort 
Inn  for  a  cup  of  its  famous  coffee.  The  coffee  turned 
out  to  be  the  greatest  kind  of  joke ;  one  of  the  men 
asked  Hewson  if  he  could  say  on  his  honor  that  it 
was  really  any  better  than  St.  John's  coffee  there  be 
fore  them,  and  another  professed  to  be  in  a  secret 
more  recondite  than  had  yet  been  divined:  it  was 
that  long  grim  girl,  who  served  it;  she  had  lured 
Hewson  from  his  rest  at  five  o'clock  in  the  morning ; 
and  this  humorist  proposed  a  Welsh  rarebit  some 
night  at  the  inn,  where  they  could  all  see  for  them 
selves  why  Hewson  broke  out  of  the  house  and 
smashed  a  trellis  before  sunrise. 

Hewson  sat  silent,  not  even  attempting  a  defensive 


HIS    APPARITION.  17 

sally.  In  fact  it  was  only  his  surface  mind  which 
was  employed  with  what  was  going  on ;  as  before,  his 
deeper  thought  was  again  absorbed  with  his  great 
experience.  He  could  not,  if  his  conscience  had 
otherwise  suffered  him,  have  spoken  of  it  in  that  com 
pany,  and  the  laughter  died  away  from  his  .silence  as 
if  it  had  been  his  offence. 

He  was  not  offended,  but  he  was  ashamed,  and  not 
ashamed  so  much  for  St.  John  as  for  himself,  that 
he  could  have  ever  imagined  acquiring  merit  in  such 
company  by  exploiting  an  experience  which  should 
have  been  sacred  to  him.  How  could  he  have  been 
so  shabby  ?  He  was  justly  punished  in  the  humilia 
ting  contrast  between  being  the  butt  of  these  poor 
wits,  and  the  hero  of  an  incident  which,  whatever  its 
real  quality  was,  had  an  august  character  of  mystery. 
He  had  recognized  this  from  the  first  instant ;  he  had 
perceived  that  the  occurrence  was  for  him,  and  for 
him  alone,  until  he  had  reasoned  some  probable  mean 
ing  into  it  or  from  it ;  and  yet  he  had  been  willing, 
he  saw  it,  he  owned  it !  to  win  the  applause  of  that 
crowd  as  a  man  who  had  just  seen  a  ghost. 

He  thought  of  them  as  that  crowd,  but  after  all, 
they  were  good-natured  people,  and  when  they  fancied 
that  he  was  somehow  vexed  with  the  turn  the  talk 


18  HIS    APPARITION. 

had  taken,  they  began  to  speak  of  other  things;  St. 
John  himself  led  the  way,  and  when  he  got  Hewsoii 
alone  after  breakfast,  he  made  him  a  sort  of  amend. 
"  I  didn't  mean  to  annoy  you,  old  fellow, "  he  said, 
"  with  my  story  about  the  burglary.  " 

"  Oh,  that's  all  right, "  Hewson  brisked  up  in  re 
sponse,  as  he  took  the  cigar  St.  John  offered  him. 
"  I'm  afraid  I  must  have  seemed  rather  stupid.  I  had 
got  to  thinking  about  something  else,  and  I  couldn't 
pull  myself  away  from  it.  I  wasn't  annoyed  at  all.  " 

Whether  St.  John  thought  this  sufficient  gratitude 
for  his  reparation  did  not  appear.  As  Hewson  did 
not  offer  to  break  the  silence  in  which  they  went  on 
smoking,  his  host  made  a  pretext,  toward  the  end  of 
their  cigars,  after  bearing  the  burden  of  the  conversa 
tion  apparently  as  long  as  he  could,  of  being  reminded 
of  something  by  the  group  of  women  descending  into 
the  garden  from  the  terraced  walk  beyond  it  and  then 
slowly,  with  little  pauses,  trailing  their  summer  dra 
peries  among  the  flower-beds  and  bushes  toward  the 
house. 

"  Oh,  by-the-way,  "  he  said,  "  T  should  like  to  in 
troduce  you  to  Miss  Hernshaw ;  she  came  last  night 
with  Mrs.  Rock :  that  tall  girl,  there,  lagging  behind 
a  little.  She's  an  original.  " 


HIS    APPARITION.  19 

"  I  noticed  her  at  breakfast,  "  Hewson  answered, 
now  first  aware  of  having  been  struck  with  the  strange 
beauty  and  strange  behavior  of  the  slim  girl,  who 
drooped  in  her  chair,  with  her  little  head  fallen  for 
ward,  and  played  with  her  bread,  ignoring  her  food 
otherwise,  while  she  listened  with  a  bored  air  to  the 
talk  which  made  Hewson  its  prey.  She  had  an  effect 
of  being  both  shy  and  indifferent,  in  this  retrospect ; 
and  when  St.  John  put  up  the  window,  and  led  the 
way  out  to  the  women  in  the  garden,  and  presented 
Hewson,  she  had  still  this  effect.  She  did  not  smile 
or  speak  in  acknowledgement  of  Hewson's  bow  ; 
she  merely  looked  at  him  with  a  sort  of  swift  inten 
sity,  and  then,  when  one  of  the  women  said,  "  We 
were  coming  to  view  the  scene  of  your  burglarious 
exploit,  Mr.  Hewson.  Was  that  the  very  window  ? " 
the  girl  looked  impatiently  away. 

"  The  very  window,  "  Hewson  owned.  "  You 
wouldn't  know  it.  St.  John  has  had  the  trellis  put 
up  and  the  spot  fresh  turfed,  "  and  he  detached  the 
interlocutory  widow  in  the  direction  of  their  bachelor 
host,  as  she  perhaps  intended  he  should,  and  dropped 
back  to  the  side  of  Miss  Hernshaw. 

She  was  almost   spiritually    slender.     In  common 

with  all  of  us,  he  had  heard  that  shape  of  girl  called 
2 


20  HIS   APPARITION. 

willowy,  but  he  made  up  his  mind  that  sweetbriery 
would  be  the  word  for  Miss  Hernshaw,  in  whose  face 
a  virginal  youth  suggested  the  tender  innocence  and 
surprise  of  the  flower,  while  the  droop  of  her  figure, 
at  once  delicate  and  self-reliant,  arrested  the  fancy 
with  a  sense  of  the  pendulous  thorny  spray.  She 
looked  not  above  sixteen  in  age,  but  as  she  was  obvi 
ously  out,  in  the  society  sense  of  the  word,  this  must 
have  been  a  moral  effect ;  and  Hewson  was  casting 
about  in  his  mind  for  some  appropriate  form  of 
thought  and  language  to  make  talk  in  when  she  ab 
ruptly  addressed  him. 

"  I  don't  see,  "  she  said,  with  her  face  still  away, 
"why  people  make  fun  of  those  poor  girls  who 
have  to  work  in  that  sort  of  public  way. " 

Hewson  silently  picked  his  steps  back  through  the 
intervening  events  to  the  drolling  at  breakfast,  and 
with  some  misgiving  took  his  stand  in  the  declara 
tion,  "  You  mean  the  waitress  at  the  inn  ? " 

"Yes!"  cried  the  girl,  with  a  gentle  indignation, 
which  was  so  dear  to  the  young  man  that  he  would 
have  given  anything  to  believe  that  it  veiled  a  measure 
of  sympathy  for  himself  as  well  as  for  the  waitress. 
"  We  went  in  there  last  night  when  we  arrived,  for 
some  pins — Mrs.  Rock  had  had  her  dress  stepped  on, 


HIS    APPARITION.  21 

getting  out  of  the  car — and  that  girl  brought  them. 
I  never  saw  such  a  sad  face.  And  she  was  very  nice ; 
she  had  no  more  manners  than  a  cow.  " 

Miss  Hernshaw  added  the  last  sentence  as  if  it  fol 
lowed,  and  in  his  poor  masculine  pride  of  sequence 
Hewson  wanted  to  ask  if  that  were  why  she  was  so 
nice  ;  but  he  obeyed  a  better  instinct  in  saying,  "  Yes, 
there's  a  whole  tragedy  in  it.  I  wonder  if  it's  poten 
tial  or  actual.  "  He  somehow  felt  safe  in  being  so 
metaphysical. 

"  Does  it  make  any  difference  ? "  Miss  Hernshaw 
demanded,  whirling  her  face  round,  and  fixing  him 
with  eyes  of  beautiful  fierceness.  "  Tragedy  is  trage 
dy,  whether  you  have  lived  it  or  not,  isn't  it  ?  And 
sometimes  it's  all  the  more  tragical  if  you  have  it  still 
to  live :  you've  got  it  before  you  !  I  don't  see  how 
any  one  can  look  at  that  girl's  face  and  laugh  at  her. 
I  should  never  forgive  any  one  who  did. " 

"  Then  I'm  glad  I  didn't  do  any  of  the  laughing, " 
said  Hewson,  willing  to  relieve  himself  from  the  strain 
of  this  high  mood,  and  yet  anxious  not  to  fall  too  far 
below  it.  "  Perhaps  I  should,  though,  if  I  hadn't 
been  the  victim  of  it  in  some  degree.  " 

"  It  was  the  vulgarest  thing  I  ever  heard ! "  said  the 
girl. 


22  HIS    APPARITION. 

Hewson  looked  at  her,  but  she  had  averted  her  face 
again.  He  had  a  longing  to  tell  her  of  his  apparition 
which  quelled  every  other  interest  in  him,  and,  as  it 
were,  blurred  his  whole  consciousness.  She  would 
understand,  with  her  childlike  truth,  and  with  her  un- 
conventionality  she  would  not  find  it  strange  that  he 
should  speak  to  her  of  such  a  thing  for  no  apparent 
reason  or  no  immediate  cause. 

He  walked  silent  at  her  side,  revolving  his  longing 
in  his  thought,  and  hating  the  circumstance  which 
forbade  him  to  speak  at  once.  He  did  not  know  how 
long  he  was  lost  in  this,  when  he  was  suddenly  re 
called  to  fearful  question  of  the  fact  by  her  saying, 
with  another  flash  of  her  face  toward  him,  "  You  have 
lost  sleep  Mr.  Hewson ! "  and  she  whipped  forward, 
and  joined  the  other  women,  who  were  following  the 
lead  of  St.  John  and  the  widow. 

Mrs.  Rock,  to  whom  Hewson  had  been  presented 
at  the  same  time  as  to  Miss  Hernshaw,  looked  vague 
ly  back  at  him  over  her  shoulder,  but  made  no  attempt 
to  include  him  in  her  group,  and  he  thought,  for  no 
reason,  that  she  was  kept  from  doing  so  on  account 
of  Miss  Hernshaw.  He  thought  he  could  be  no  more 
mistaken  in  this  than  in  the  resentment  of  Miss  Hern 
shaw,  which  he  was  aware  of  meriting,  however 


HIS    APPARITION.  23 

unintentionally.  Later,  after  lunch,  lie  made  sure  of 
this  fact  when  Mrs.  Rock  got  him  into  a  corner,  and 
cozily  began,  "  I  always  feel  like  explaining  Rosalie 
a  little, "  and  then  her  vague,  friendly  eye  wandered 
toward  Miss  Hernshaw  across  the  room,  and  stopped, 
as  if  waiting  for  the  girl  to  look  away.  But  Miss 
Hernshaw  did  not  look  away,  and  that  afternoon, 
Hewson's  week  being  up,  he  left  St.  Johnswort  before 
dinner. 


IV. 

THE  time  came,  before  the  following  winter,  when 
Hewson  was  tempted  beyond  his  strength,  and  told 
the  story  of  his  apparition.  He  told  it  more  than 
once,  and  kept  himself  with  increasing  difficulty  from 
lying  about  it.  He  always  wished  to  add  something, 
to  amplify  the  fact,  to  heighten  the  mystery  of  the 
circumstances,  to  divine  the  occult  significance  of  the 
incident.  In  itself  the  incident,  when  stated,  was 
rather  bare  and  insufficient;  but  he  held  himself 
rigidly  to  the  actual  details,  and  he  felt  that  in  this 
at  least  he  was  offering  the  powers  which  had  vouch 
safed  him  the  experience  a  species  of  atonement  for 
breaking  faith  with  them.  It  seemed  like  breaking 
faith  with  Miss  Hernshaw,  too,  though  this  impres 
sion  would  have  been  harder  to  reason  than  the  other. 
Both  impressions  began  to  wear  off  after  the  first 
tellings  of  the  story;  the  wound  that  Hewson  gave 
his  sensibility  in  the  very  first  cicatrized  before  the 


HIS    APPARITION.  25 

second,  and  at  the  fourth  or  fifth  it  had  quite  cal 
loused  over;  so  that  he  did  not  mind  anything  so 
much  as  what  always  seemed  to  him  the  inadequate 
effect  of  his  experience  with  his  hearers.  Some  lis 
tened  carelessly ;  some  nervously  ;  some  incredulously, 
as  if  he  were  trying  to  put  up  a  job  on  them ;  some 
compassionately,  as  if  he  were  not  quite  right,  and 
ought  to  be  looked  after.  There  was  a  consensus  of 
opinion,  among  those  who  offered  any  sort  of  com 
ment,  that  he  ought  to  give  it  to  the  Psychical 
Research,  and  at  the  bottom  of  Hewson's  heart,  there 
was  a  dread  that  the  spiritualists  would  somehow  get 
hold  of  him.  This  remained  to  stay  him,  when  the 
shame  of  breaking  faith  with  Miss  Hernshaw  and 
with  Mystery  no  longer  restrained  him  from  exploit 
ing  the  fact.  He  was  aware  of  lying  in  wait  for 
opportunities  of  telling  it,  and  he  swore  himself  to 
tell  it  only  upon  direct  provocation,  or  when  the  oc 
casion  seemed  imperatively  to  demand  it.  He 
commonly  brought  it  out  to  match  some  experience 
of  another ;  but  he  could  never  deny  a  friendly  appeal 
when  he  sat  with  some  good  fellows  over  their  five- 
o'clock  cocktails  at  the  club,  and  one  of  them  would 
say  in  behalf  of  a  new-comer,  "  Hewson,  tell  Wilkins 
that  odd  thing  that  happened  to  you  up  country  in 


26  HIS    APPARITION. 

the  summer. "  In  complying  he  tried  to  save  his 
self-respect  by  affecting  a  contemptuous  indifference 
in  the  matter,  and  beginning  reluctantly  and  pooh- 
poohingly.  He  had  pangs  afterwards  as  he  walked 
home  to  dress  for  dinner,  but  his  self-reproach  was 
less  afflicting  as  time  passed.  His  suffering  from  it 
was  never  so  great  as  from  the  slight  passed  upon  his 
apparition,  when  Wilkins  or  what  other  it  might  be, 
would  meet  the  suggestion  that  he  should  tell  him 
about  it,  with  the  hurried  interposition,  "  Yes,  I  have 
heard  that ;  good  story.  "  This  would  make  Hewson 
think  that  he  was  beginning  to  tell  his  story  too  of 
ten,  and  that  perhaps  the  friend  who  suggested  his 
doing  so,  was  playing  upon  his  forgetfulness.  He 
wondered  if  he  were  really  something  of  a  bore  with 
it,  and  whether  men  were  shying  off  from  him  at  the 
club  on  account  of  it.  He  fancied  that  might  be  the 
reason  why  the  circle  at  the  five-o'clock  cocktails 
gradually  diminished  as  the  winter  passed.  He 
continued  to  join  it  till  the  chance  offered  of  squarely 
refusing  to  tell  Wilkins,  or  whoever,  about  the  odd 
thing  that  had  happened  to  him  up  country  in  the 
summer.  Then  he  felt  that  he  had  in  a  manner  re 
trieved  himself,  and  could  retire  from  the  five-o'clock 
cocktails  with  honor. 


HIS    APPARITION.  27 

That  it  was  a  veridical  phantom  which  had 
appeared  to  him  he  did  not  in  his  inmost  at  all  doubt, 
though  in  his  superficial  consciousness  he  questioned 
it,  not  indeed  so  disrespectfully  as  he  pooh-poohed  it 
to  others,  but  still  questioned  it.  This  he  thought 
somehow  his  due  as  a  man  of  intelligence  who  ought 
not  to  suffer  himself  to  fall  into  superstition  even 
upon  evidence  granted  to  few.  Superficially,  how 
ever,  as  well  as  interiorly,  he  was  aware  of  always 
expecting  its  repetition ;  and  now,  six  months  after 
the  occurrence  this  expectation  was  as  vivid  with  him 
as  it  was  the  first  moment  after  the  vision  had  van 
ished,  while  his  tongue  was  yet  in  act  to  stay  it  with 
speech.  He  would  not  have  been  surprised  at  any 
time  in  walking  into  his  room  to  find  Tt  there;  or 
waking  at  night  to  confront  It  in  the  electric  flash 
which  he  kindled  by  a  touch  of  the  button  at  his 
bedside.  Rather,  he  was  surprised  that  nothing  of 
the  sort  happened,  to  confirm  him  in  his  belief  that 
he  had  been  all  but  in  touch  with  the  other  life,  or  to 
give  him  some  hint,  the  slightest,  the  dimmest,  why 
this  vision  had  been  shown  him,  and  then  instantly 
broken  and  withdrawn.  In  that  inmost  of  his  where 
he  recognized  its  validity,  he  could  not  deny  that  it 
had  a  meaning,  and  that  it  had  been  sent  him  for 


28  HIS   APPARITION. 

some  good  reason  special  to  himself ;  though  at  the 
times  when  he  had  prefaced  his  story  of  it  with  terms 
of  slighting  scepticism,  he  had  professed  neither  to 
know  nor  to  care  why  the  thing  had  happened.  He 
always  said  that  he  had  never  been  particularly  inter 
ested  in  the  supernatural,  and  then  was  ashamed  of  a 
lie  that  was  false  to  universal  human  experience ;  but 
he  could  truthfully  add  that  he  had  never  in  his  life 
felt  less  like  seeing  a  ghost  than  that  morning.  It 
was  not  full  day,  but  it  was  perfectly  light,  and  there 
the  thing  was,  as  palpable  to  vision  as  any  of  the 
men  that  moment  confronting  him  with  cocktails  in 
their  hands.  Asked  if  he  did  not  think  he  had 
dreamed  it,  he  answered  scornfully  that  he  did  not 
think,  he  knew,  he  had  not  dreamed  it;  he  did  not 
value  the  experience,  it  was  and  had  always  been  per 
fectly  meaningless,  but  he  would  stake  his  life  upon 
its  reality.  Asked  if  it  had  not  perhaps  been  the 
final  office  of  a  nightcap,  he  disdained  to  answer  at 
all,  though  he  did  not  openly  object  to  the  laugh 
which  the  suggestion  raised. 

Secretly,  within  his  inmost,  Hewson  felt  justly 
punished  by  the  laughter.  He  had  been  unworthy  of 
his  apparition  in  lightly  exposing  it  to  such  a  chance ; 
he  had  fallen  below  the  dignity  of  his  experience. 


HIS    APPARITION.  29 

He  might  never  hope  to  fathom  its  meaning  while  he 
lived ;  but  he  grieved  for  the  wrong  he  had  done  it, 
as  if  at  the  instant  of  the  apparition  he  had  offered 
that  majestic,  silent  figure  some  grotesque  indignity : 
thrown  a  pillow  at  it,  or  hailed  it  in  tones  of  mocking 
offence.  He  was  profoundly  and  exquisitely  ashamed 
even  before  he  ceased  to  tell  the  story  for  his  lis 
teners'  idle  amusement.  When  he  stopped  doing  so, 
and  snubbed  solicitation  with  the  curt  answer  that 
everybody  had  heard  that  story,  he  was  retrospec 
tively  ashamed ;  and  mixed  with  the  expectation  of 
seeing  the  vision  again  was  the  formless  wish  to  offer 
it  some  sort  of  reparation,  of  apology. 

He  longed  to  prove  himself  not  wholly  unworthy 
of  the  advance  that  had  been  made  him  from  the 
other  world  upon  grounds  which  he  had  done  his 
worst  to  prove  untenable.  He  could  not  imagine 
what  the  grounds  were,  though  he  had  to  admit  their 
probable  existence :  such  an  event  might  have  no  ob 
vious  or  present  significance,  but  it  had  not  happened 
for  nothing ;  it  could  not  have  happened  for  no 
thing.  Hewson  might  not  have  been  in  what  he 
thoaght  any  stressful  need  of  ghostly  comfort  or 
reassurance  in  matters  of  faith.  He  was  not  inordi 
nately  agnostic,  or  in  the  way  of  becoming  so.  He 


30  HIS    APPARITION. 

was  simply  an  average  skeptical  American,  who  de 
nied  no  more  than  he  affirmed,  and  who  really 
concerned  himself  so  little  about  his  soul,  though  he 
tried  to  keep  his  conscience  decently  clean,  that  he 
had  not  lately  asked  whether  other  people  had  such  a 
thing  or  not.  He  had  not  lost  friends,  and  he  was  so 
much  alone  in  this  world  that  it  seemed  improbable 
the  fate  of  any  uncle  or  cousin,  in  the  absence  of 
more  immediate  kindred,  should  be  mystically  fore 
cast  to  him.  He  was  perfectly  well  at  the  time  of 
the  apparition,  and  it  could  not  have  been  the  figment 
of  a  disordered  digestion,  as  the  lusty  hunger  which 
willingly  appeased  itself  with  the  coffee  of  the  St. 
Johnswort  Inn  sufficiently  testified.  Yet,  in  spite  of 
all  this,  an  occurrence  so  out  of  the  course  of  events 
must  have  had  some  message  for  him,  and  it  must 
have  been  his  fault  that  he  could  not  divine  it.  A 
sense  of  culpability  grew  upon  him  with  the  sense  of 
his  ignominy  in  cheapening  it  by  making  it  subser 
vient  to  what  he  knew  was,  in  the  last  analysis,  a 
wretched  vanity.  At  least  he  could  refuse  himself 
that  miserable  gratification  hereafter,  and  he  got  back 
some  measure  of  self-respect  in  forbidding  himself 
the  pleasure  he  might  have  taken  in  being  noted  for  a 
strange  experience  he  could  never  be  got  to  speak  of. 


V. 

THE  implication  of  any  such  study  as  this  is  that 
the  subject  of  it  is  continuously  if  not  exclusively  oc 
cupied  with  the  matter  which  is  supposed  to  make 
him  interesting.  But  of  course  it  was  not  so  with 
Hewson,  who  perhaps  did  not  think  of  his  apparition 
once  in  a  fortnight,  or  oftener,  say,  than  he  thought 
of  the  odd  girl  with  whom  for  no  reason,  except  con 
temporaneity  in  his  acquaintance,  he  associated  with 
it.  If  he  never  thought  of  the  apparition  without 
subconsciously  expecting  its  return,  he  equally  ex 
pected  when  he  thought  of  Miss  Hernshaw  that  the 
chances  of  society  would  bring  them  together  again, 
and  it  was  with  no  more  surprise  than  if  the  vision 
had  intimated  its  second  approach  that  he  one  night 
found  her  name  in  the  minute  envelope  which  the 
footman  presented  him  at  a  house  where  he  was  going 
to  dine,  and  realized  that  he  was  appointed  to  take 
her  out.  It  was  a  house  where  he  rather  liked  to  go, 


32  HIS    APPARITION. 

for  in  that  New  York  of  his  where  so  few  houses  had 
any  distinctive  character,  this  one  had  a  temperament 
of  its  own  in  so  far  that  you  might  expect  to  meet 
people  of  temperament  there,  if  anywhere.  They 
were  indeed  held  in  a  social  solution  where  many 
other  people  of  no  temperament  at  all  floated  largely 
and  loosely  about,  but  they  were  there,  all  the  same, 
and  it  was  worth  coming  on  the  chance  of  meeting 
them,  though  the  indiscriminate  hospitality  of  the 
hostess  might  let  the  evening  pass  without  promoting 
the  chance.  Now,  however,  she  had  unwittingly  put 
into  Hewson's  keeping,  for  two  hours  at  least,  the 
very  temperament  that  had  kept  his  fancy  for  the  last 
half-year  and  more.  He  fairly  laughed  at  sight  of 
the  name  on  the  little  card,  and  hurried  into  the  draw 
ing-room,  where  the  first  thing  after  greeting  his 
hostess,  he  caught  the  wandering  look  and  vague  smile 
of  Mrs.  Rock.  The  look  and  the  smile  became  per 
sonal  to  him,  and  she  welcomed  him  with  a  curious 
resumption  of  the  confidential  terms  in  which  they 
had  seemed  to  part  that  afternoon  at  St.  Johnswort. 
He  thought  that  she  was  going  to  begin  talking  to 
him  where  she  had  left  off,  about  Rosalie,  as  she  had 
called  her,  and  he  was  disappointed  in  the  common 
places  that  actually  ensued.  At  the  end  of  these, 


HIS    APPAKITION.  33 

however,  she  did  say  :  "  Miss  Hernshc.w  is  here  with 
me.     Have  you  seen  her  ?  " 

"  Oh,  yes,  "  Hewson  returned,  for  he  had  caught 
sight  of  the  girl  in  a  distant  group,  on  his  way  up  to 
Mrs.  Rock,  but  in  view  of  the  affluent  opportunity 
before  him  had  richly  forborne  trying  even  to  make 
her  bow  to  him,  though  he  believed  she  had  seen  him. 
"  I  am  to  have  the  happiness  of  going  out  with  her. " 
"  Oh,  indeed,  "  said  Mrs.  Rock,  "  that  is  nice,  "  and 
then  the  people  began  assorting  themselves,  and  the 
man  who  was  appointed  to  take  Mrs.  Rock  out,  came 
and  bowed  Hewson  away. 

He  hastened  to  that  corner  of  the  room  where  Miss 
Hernshaw  was  waiting,  and  if  he  had  been  suddenly 
confronted  with  his  apparition  he  could  not  have  ex 
perienced  a  deeper  and  stranger  satisfaction  than  lie 
felt  as  the  girl  lifted  up  her  innocent  fierce  face  upon 
him. 

It  brought  back  that  whole  day  at  St.  Johnswort, 
of  which  she,  with  his  vision,  formed  the  supreme 
interest  and  equally  the  mystery  ;  and  it  went  warmly 
to  his  heart  to  have  her  peremptorily  abolish  all 
banalities  by  saying,  "  I  was  wondering  if  they  were 
going  to  give  me  you,  as  soon  as  you  came  in.  " 
She  put  her  slim  hand  on  his  arm  as  she  spoke,  and 


34  HIS    APPARITION. 

he  thought  she  must  have  felt  him  quiver  at  her 
touch.  "  Then  you  were  not  afraid  thev  were  going 
to  give  you  me  ?  "  he  bantered. 

"  No, "  she  said,  "  I  wanted  to  talk  with  you.  I 
wanted  you  to  tell  me  what  Mrs.  Rock  said  about  me  ? " 

"  Just  now  ?     She  said  you  were  here.  " 

"  No,  I  mean  that  day  at  St.  Johnswort.  " 

Hewson  laughed  out  for  pleasure  in  her  frankness, 
and  then  he  felt  a  gathering  up  of  his  coat-sleeve 
under  her  nervous  fingers,  as  if  (such  a  thing  being 
imaginable)  she  were  going  unwittingly  to  pinch  him 
for  his  teasing.  "  She  said  she  wanted  to  explain  you 
a  little.  " 

"And  then  what?" 

"  And  then  nothing.  She  seemed  to  catch  your 
eye,  and  she  stopped.  " 

The  fingers  relaxed  their  hold  upon  that  gathering 
up  of  his  coat- sleeve.  "  I  won't  be  explained,  and  I 
have  told  her  so.  If  I  choose  to  act  myself,  and  show 
out  my  real  thoughts  and  feelings,  how  is  it  any  worse 
than  if  I  acted  somebody  else  ? " 

"  I  should  think  it  was  very  much  better, "  said 
Hewson,  inwardly  warned  to  keep  his  face  straight. 


VI. 

THEY  had  time  for  no  more  talk  between  the  draw 
ing-room  and  the  dinner  table,  and  when  Miss  Hern- 
shaw's  chair  had  been  pushed  in  behind  her,  and  she 
sat  down,  she  turned  instantly  to  the  man  on  her  right 
and  began  speaking  to  him,  and  left  Hewson  to  make 
conversation  with  any  one  he  liked  or  could. 

He  did  not  get  on  very  well,  not  because  there  were 
not  enough  amusing  people  beside  him  and  over 
against  him,  but  because  he  was  all  the  time  trying  to 
eavesdrop  what  was  saying  between  Miss  Hernshaw 
and  the  man  on  her  right.  It  seemed  to  be  absolute 
trivialities  they  were  talking;  so  far  as  Hewson  made 
out  they  got  no  deeper  than  the  new  play  which  was 
then  commanding  the  public  favor  apparently  for  the 
reason  that  it  was  altogether  surface,  with  no  measure 
upwards  or  downwards.  Upon  this  surface  the  com 
ment  of  the  man  on  Miss  Ilernshaw's  right  wandered 
iudefatigably. 


30  HIS    APPAKITION. 

Hewson  could  not  imagine  of  her  sincerity  a  delib 
erate  purpose  of  letting  the  poor  fellow  show  all  the 
shallowness  that  was  in  him,  and  of  amusing  itself 
with  his  satisfaction  in  turning  his  empty  mind  inside 
out  for  her  inspection.  She  seemed,  if  not  genuinely 
interested,  to  be  paying  him  an  unaffected  attention ; 
but  when  the  lady  across  the  table  addressed  a  word 
to  him,  Miss  Ilernshaw,  as  if  she  had  been  watching 
for  some  such  chance,  instantly  turned  to  Hewson. 

"  What  do  you  think  of  «  Ghosts '  ?  "  she  asked, 
with  imperative  suddenness. 

"  Ghosts  ? "  he  echoed. 

'•  Or  perhaps  you  didn't  go  ?  "  she  suggested,  and 
he  perceived  that  she  meant  Ibsen's  tragedy.  But 
he  did  not  answer  at  once.  He  had  had  a  shock,  and 
for  a  timeless  space  he  had  been  back  in  his  room  at 
St.  Johnswort,  with  that  weird  figure  seated  at  his 
table.  It  seemed  to  vanish  again  when  he  gave  a 
second  glance,  as  it  had  vanished  before,  and  he  drew 
a  long  sigh,  and  looked  a  little  haggardly  at  Miss 
Ilernshaw.  "  Ah,  I  see  you  did  !  Wasn't  it  tre 
mendous  ?  I  think  the  girl  who  did  Regina  was 
simply  awful,  don't  you  ? " 

"  I  don't  know,  "  said  Hewson,  still  so  trammeled 
in  his  own  involuntary  associations  with  the  word  as 


HIS    APPARITION.  37 

not  fully  to  realize  the  strangeness  of  discussing 
"  Ghosts  "  with  a  young  lady.  But  he  pulled  himself 
together,  and  nimbly  making  his  reflection  that  the 
latitude  of  the  stage  gave  room  for  the  meeting  of 
cultivated  intelligences  in  regions  otherwise  tabooed, 
if  they  were  of  opposite  sexes,  he  responded  in  kind. 
"  I  think  that  the  greatest  miracle  of  the  play — and 
to  me  it  was  altogether  miraculous  " — 

"  Oh,  I'm  glad  to  hear  you  say  that ! "  cried  the 
girl.  "It  was  the  greatest  experience  of  my  life.  I 
can't  bear  to  have  people  undervalue  it.  I  want  to 
hit  them.  But  go  on  !  " 

Hewson  went  on  as  gravely  as  he  could  in  view  of 
her  potential  violence:  he  pictured  Miss  Hernshaw 
beating  down  the  inadequate  witnesses  of  "  Ghosts  " 
with  her  fan,  which  lay  in  her  lap,  with  her  cobwebby 
handkerchief,  drawn  through  its  ring,  and  her  long 
limp  gloves  looking  curiously  like  her  pretty  young 
arms  in  their  slenderness.  "  I  was  merely  going  to  say 
that  the  most  prodigious  effect  of  the  play  was  among 
the  actors — I  won't  venture  on  the  spectators —  " 

"  No,  don't !     It  isn't  speakable.  " 

"  It's  astonishing  the  effect  a  play  of  Ibsen's  has 
with  the  actors.  They  can't  play  false.  It  turns  the 
merest  theatrical  sticks  into  men  and  women,  and  it 


38  HIS    APPARITION. 

does  it  through  the  perfect  honesty  of  the  dramatist. 
He  deals  so  squarely  with  himself  that  they  have  to 
deal  squarely  with  themselves.  They  have  to  be,  and 
not  just  seem. " 

Miss  Hernshaw  sighed  deeply.  "  I'm  glad  you 
think  that,  "  she  said,  and  Hewson  felt  very  glad  too 
that  he  thought  that. 

"  Why? "  he  asked. 

"  Why  ?  Because  that  is  what  I  always  want  to 
do ;  and  it's  what  I  always  shall  do,  I  don't  care  what 
they  say. " 

"  But  I  don't  know  whether  I  understand  exactly.  " 

"  Deal  squarely  with  everybody.  Say  what  I  really 
feel.  Then  they  say  what  they  really  feel.  " 

There  was  an  obscure  resentment  unworthily  strug 
gling  at  the  bottom  of  Hewson's  heart  for  her  long 
neglect  of  him  in  behalf  of  the  man  on  her  left. 
"  Yes,  "  he  said,  "  if  they  are  capable  of  really  feeling 
anything. " 

"  What  do  you  mean  ?    Everybody  really  feels.  " 

"  Well,  then,  thinking  anything.  " 

She  drew  herself  up  a  little  with  an  air  of  question. 
"  I  believe  everybody  really  thinks,  too,  and  it's  your 
duty  to  let  them  find  out  what  they're  thinking,  by 
truly  saying  what  you  think.  " 


HIS    APPARITION.  39 

"  Then  she  isn't  dealing  quite  honestly  with  him,  " 
said  Hewson,  with  a  malicious  smile. 

The  man  at  Miss  Hernshaw's  left  was  still  talking 
about  the  play,  and  he  was  at  that  moment  getting 
off  a  piece  of  pure  parrotry  about  it  to  the  lady  across 
the  table  :  just  what  everybody  had  been  saying  about 
it  from  the  first. 

"  No,  I  should  think  she  was  not,"  said  the  girl, 
gravely.  She  looked  hurt,  as  if  she  had  been  unfairly 
forced  to  the  logic  of  her  postulate,  and  Hewson  was 
not  altogether  pleased  with  himself ;  but  at  least  he 
had  had  his  revenge  in  making  her  realize  the  man's 
vacuity. 

He  tried  to  get  her  back  to  talk  about  "  Ghosts,  " 
again,  but  she  answered  with  indifference,  and  just 
then  he  was  arrested  by  something  a  man  was  saying 
near  the  head  of  the  table. 


VII. 

IT  was  rather  a  large  dinner,  but  not  so  large  that  a 
striking  phrase,  launched  in  a  momentary  lull,  could 
not  fuse  all  the  wandering  attentions  in  a  sole  regard. 
The  man  who  spoke  was  the  psychologist  Wanhope, 
and  he  was  saying  with  a  melancholy  that  mocked 
itself  a  little  in  his  smile:  "I  shouldn't  be  particular 
about  seeing  a  ghost  myself.  I  have  seen  plenty  of 
men  who  had  seen  men  who  had  seen  ghosts ;  but  I 
never  yet  saw  a  man  who  had  seen  a  ghost.  If  I  had 
it  would  go  a  long  way  to  persuade  me  of  ghosts.  " 

Hewson  felt  his  heart  thump  in  his  throat.  There 
was  a  pause,  and  it  was  as  if  all  eyes  but  the  eyes  of 
the  psychologist  turned  upon  him ;  these  rested  upon 
the  ice  which  the  servant  had  just  then  silently  slip 
ped  under  them.  Hewson  had  no  reason  to  think 
that  any  of  the  people  present  were  acquainted  with 
his  experience,  but  he  thought  it  safest  to  take  them 
upon  the  supposition  that  they  had,  and  after  he  had 


HIS    APPARITION  41 

said  to  the  psychologist,  "Will  you  allow  me  to 
present  him  to  you  ? "  he  added,  "  I'm  afraid  every 
one  else  knows  him  too  well  already.  " 

"You!"  said  his  vis-a-vis,  arching  her  eyebrows; 
and  others  up  and  down  the  table,  looked  rounder 
over  at  Hewson  where  he  sat  midway  of  it  with  Miss 
Hernshaw  drooping  beside  him.  She  alone  seemed 
indifferent  to  his  pretension ;  she  seemed  even  insensi 
ble  of  it,  as  she  broke  off  little  corners  of  her  ice  with 
her  fork. 

The  psychologist  fixed  his  eyes  on  him  with 
scientific  challenge  as  well  as  scientific  interest.  "Do 
you  mean  that  you  have  seen  a  ghost  ?  " 

"  Yes — ghost.  Generically — provisionally.  We  al 
ways  consider  them  ghosts,  don't  we,  till  they 
prove  themselves  something  else  ?  I  once  saw  an 
apparition.  " 

Several  people  who  were  near-sighted  or  far-placed 
put  on  their  eye-glasses,  to  make  out  whether 
Hewson  were  serious ;  a  lady  who  had  a  handsome 
forearm  put  up  a  lorgnette  and  inspected  him  through 
it ;  she  had  the  air  of  questioning  his  taste,  and  the 
subtle  aura  of  her  censure  penetrated  to  him,  though 
she  preserved  a  face  of  rigid  impassivity.  He  re 
turned  her  stare  defiantly,  though  he  was  aware  of 


42  HIS    APPARITION. 

not  reaching  her  through  the  lenses  as  effectively  as 
she  reached  him.  Most  of  those  who  prepared  them 
selves  to  listen  seemed  to  be  putting  him  on  trial,  and 
they  apparently  justified  themselves  in  this  from  the 
cross-questioning  method  the  psychologist  necessarily 
took  in  his  wish  to  clarify  the  situation. 

"  How  long  ago  was  it  ? "  he  asked,  coldly. 

"  Last  summer. " 

"  Was  it  after  dark  ? " 

"  Very  much  after.     It  was  at  day -break.  " 

"  Oh  !  You  were  alone  ? " 

"  Quite. " 

"You  made  sure  you  were  not  dreaming  ? " 

"  I  made  sure  of  that,  instantly.  I  was  not  awaken 
ed  by  the  apparition.  I  was  already  fully  awake.  " 

"  Had  your  mind  been  running  on  anything  of  the 
kind  ? " 

"  Nothing  could  have  been  farther  from  it.  I  was 
thinking  what  a  very  long  while  it  would  be  till 
breakfast.  "  This  was  not  true  as  to  the  order  of  the 
fact ;  but  Hewson  could  not  keep  himself  from  saying 
it,  and  it  made  a  laugh  and  created  a  diversion  in  his 
favor. 

"  How  long  did  it  seem  to  last ! " 

"  The  vision  ?     That  was  very  curious.     The  whole 


HIS    APPARITION.  43 

affair  was  quite  achronic,  as  I  may  say.  The  figure 
was  there  and  it  was  not  there. " 

"  It  vanished  suddenly  ? " 

"  I  can't  say  it  vanished  at  all.  It  ought  still  to  be 
there.  Have  you  ever  returned  to  a  place  where  you 
had  always  been  wrong  as  to  the  points  of  the  com 
pass,  and  found  yourself  right  up  to  a  certain 
moment  as  you  approached,  and  then  without  any 
apparent  change,  found  yourself  perfectly  wrong 
again  ?  The  figure  was  not  there,  and  it  was  there, 
and  then  it  was  not  there.  " 

"  I  think  I  see  what  you  mean,  "  said  the  psy 
chologist,  warily.  "  The  evanescence  was  subjective.  " 

"  Altogether.     But  so  was  the  apparescence.  " 

"  Ah  ! "  said  Wanhope.  "  You  hadn't  any  head 
ache  ? " 

"  Not  the  least.  " 

"  Ah  !  "  The  psychologist  desisted  with  the  effect 
of  letting  the  defence  take  the  witness. 

A  general  dissatisfaction  diffused  itself,  and 
Hewson  felt  it;  but  he  disdained  to  do  anything  to 
appease  it.  He  remained  silent  for  that  appreciable 
time  which  elapsed  before  his  host  said,  almost  com 
passionately,  "Won't  you  tell  us  all  about  it,  Mr. 
Hewson. " 


44  HIS    APPARITION. 

The  guests,  all  but  Miss  Hernshaw,  seemed  to 
return  to  their  impartial  frame,  with  a  leaning  in 
Hewson's  favor,  such  as  the  court-room  feels  when 
the  accused  is  about  to  testify  in  his  own  behalf ;  the 
listeners  cannot  help  wishing  him  well,  though  they 
may  have  their  own  opinions  of  his  guilt. 

"Why,  there  isn't  any  <  all-about-it, ' "  said 
Hewson.  "  The  whole  thing  has  been  stated  as  to 
the  circumstances  and  conditions.  "  He  could  see 
the  baffled  greed  in  the  eyes  of  those  who  were  hun 
gering  for  a  morsel  of  the  marvellous,  and  he  made 
it  as  meagre  as  he  could.  He  had  now  no  temptation 
to  exaggerate  the  simple  fact,  and  he  hurried  it  out 
in  the  fewest  possible  words. 


VIII. 

THE  general  disappointment  was  evident  in  the 
moment  of  waiting  which  followed  upon  his  almost 
contemptuous  ending.  His  audience  some  of  them 
took  their  cue  from  his  own  ironical  manner,  and 
joked ;  others  looked  as  if  they  had  been  trifled  with. 
The  psychologist  said,  "  Curious.  "  He  did  not  go 
back  to  his  position  that  belief  in  ghosts  should 
follow  from  seeing  a  man  who  had  seen  one;  he 
seemed  rather  annoyed  by  the  encounter.  The  talk 
took  another  turn  and  distributed  itself  again 
between  contiguous  persons  for  the  brief  time  that 
elapsed  before  the  women  were  to  leave  the  men  to 
their  coffee  and  cigars. 

When  their  hostess  rose  Hewson  offered  his  arm 
to  Miss  Hernshaw.  She  had  not  spoken  to  him  since 
he  had  told  the  story  of  his  apparition.  Now  she 
said  in  an  undertone  so  impassioned  that  every 
vibration  from  her  voice  shook  his  heart,  "  If  I  were 
you,  I  would  never  tell  that  story  again ! "  and  she 


4:6  HIS    APPARITION. 

pressed  his  arm  with  unconscious  intensity,  while  she 
looked  away  from  him. 

"  You  don't  believe  it  happened  ? "  he  returned. 
-."It  did." 

"  Of  course  it  happened  !  Why  shouldn't  I  believe 
that  ?  But  that's  the  very  reason  why  I  wouldn't  have 
told  it.  If  it  happened,  it  was  something  sacred — 
awful !  Oh,  I  don't  see  how  you  could  bear  to  speak 
of  it  at  a  dinner,  when  people  were  all  torpid  with — 

She  stopped  breathlessly,  with  a  break  in  her  voice 
that  sounded  just  short  of  a  sob. 

"  Well,  I'm  sufficiently  ashamed  of  doing  it,  and 
not  for  the  first  time, ''  he  said,  in  sullen  discontent 
with  himself.  "  And  I've  been  properly  punished. 
You  can't  think  how  sick  it  makes  me  to  realize  what 
a  detestable  sensation  I  was  seeking.  " 

She  did  not  heed  what  he  was  saying.  "  Was  it 
that  morning  at  St.  Johnswort  when  you  got  up  so 
early,  and  went  for  a  cup  of  coffee  at  the  inn  ? " 

"  Yes. " 

"  I  thought  so !  I  could  follow  every  instant  of  it ; 
I  could  see  just  how  it  was.  If  such  a  thing  had 
happened  to  me,  I  would  have  died  before  I  spoke  of 
it  at  such  a  time  as  this.  Oh,  why  do  you  suppose 
it  happened  to  you  ?  "  the  girl  grieved. 


HIS    APPARITIOK.  47 

"  Me,  of  all  men  ? "  said  Ilewson,  with  a  self- 
contemptuous  smile. 

"  I  thought  you  were  different,  "  she  said  absently  ; 
then  abruptly :  "  What  are  you  standing  here  talking 
to  me  so  long  for?  You  must  go  back!  All  the  men 
have  gone  back,  "  and  Ilewson  perceived  that  they 
had  arrived  in  the  drawing-room,  and  were  conspicu 
ously  parleying  in  the  face  of  a  dozen  interested 
women  witnesses. 

In  the  dining-room  he  took  his  way  toward  a 
vacant  place  at  the  table  near  his  host,  who  was  say 
ing  behind  his  cigar  to  another  old  fellow :  "  I  used 
to  know  her  mother ;  she  was  rather  original  too ;  but 
nothing  to  this  girl.  I  don't  envy  Mrs.  Rock  her  job.  " 

"  I  don't  know  what  the  pay  of  a  chaperon  is,  but 
I  suppose  Hernshaw  can  make  it  worth  her  while,  if 
he's  like  the  rest  out  there, "  said  the  other  old 
fellow.  "  I  imagine  he's  somewhere  in  his  millions.  " 

The  host  held  up  one  of  his  fingers.  "  Is  that  all  ? 
I  thought  more.  Mines  ? " 

"  Cattle.  Ah,  Mr.  Ilewson, "  said  the  host,  turning 
to  welcome  him  to  the  chair  on  his  other  side. 
"  Have  a  cigar.  That  was  a  strong  story  you  gave 
us.  It  had  a  good  fault,  though.  It  was  too  short.  " 


IX. 

HEWSON  had  begun  now  to  feel  a  keen,  persistent, 
painful  sympathy  for  the  apparition  itself  as  for 
some  one  whose  confidence  had  been  abused;  and 
this  feeling  was  none  the  less,  but  all  the  more,  poig 
nant  because  it  was  he  himself  who  was  guilty 
towards  it.  He  pitied  it  in  a  sort  as  if  it  had  been 
the  victim  of  a  wrong  more  shocking  perhaps  for  the 
want  of  taste  in  it  than  for  any  real  turpitude.  This 
was  a  quality  of  the  event  not  without  a  strange  con 
solation.  In  arraying  him  on  the  side  of  the 
apparition,  it  antagonized  him  with  what  he  had 
done,  and  enabled  him  to  renounce  and  disown  it. 

From  the  night  of  that  dinner,  Hewson  did  not 
again  tell  the  story  of  his  apparition,  though  the 
opportunities  to  do  so  now  sought  him  as  constantly 
as  he  had  formerly  sought  them.  They  offered  him 
a  fresh  temptation  through  the  different  perversions 
of  the  fact  that  had  got  commonly  abroad,  but  he 


HIS    APPARITION.  49 

resisted  this  temptation,  and  let  the  perversions, 
sometimes  annoyingly,  sometimes  amusingly,  but 
always  more  and  more  wildly,  wide  of  the  reality, 
take  their  course.  In  his  reticence  he  had  the  sense 
of  atoning  not  only  to  the  apparition  but  to  Miss 
Hernshaw  too. 

Before  he  met  her  again,  Miss  Hernshaw  had  been 
carried  off  to  Europe  by  Mrs.  Rock,  perhaps  with  the 
purpose  of  trying  the  veteran  duplicities  of  that 
continent  in  breaking  down  the  insurgent  sincerity  of 
her  ward.  Hewson  heard  that  she  was  not  to  be 
gone  a  great  while ;  it  was  well  into  the  winter  when 
they  started,  and  he  understood  that  they  were 
merely  going  to  Rome  for  the  end  of  the  season,  and 
were  then  going  to  work  northward,  and  after  June 
in  London  were  coming  home.  He  did  not  fail  to 
see  her  again  before  she  left  for  any  want  of 
wishing,  but  he  did  not  happen  to  meet  her  at  other 
houses,  and  at  the  house  of  Mrs.  Rock,  if  she  had 
one,  he  had  not  been  asked  to  call,  or  invited  to  any 
function.  In  thinking  the  point  over  it  occurred  to 
Hewson  that  this  was  so  because  he  was  not  wanted 
there,  and  not  wanted  by  Miss  Hernshaw  herself ;  for 
it  had  been  in  his  brief  experience  of  her  that  she  let 
people  know  what  she  wanted,  and  that  with  Mrs. 


50  HIS    APPARITION. 

Rock,  whose  character  seemed  to  answer  to  her  name 
but  poorly,  she  had  ways  of  getting  what  she  wanted. 
If  Miss  Hernshaw  had  wished  to  meet  him  again,  he 
could  not  doubt  that  she  would  have  asked  him,  or 
at  the  least  had  him  asked  to  come  and  see  her,  and 
not  have  left  it  to  the  social  fortutities  to  bring  them 
together. 

Towards  the  end  of  the  term  which  rumor  had 
fixed  to  her  stay  abroad  Hewson's  folly  was  embit 
tered  to  him  in  a  way  that  he  had  never  expected  in 
his  deepest  shame  and  darkest  forboding.  But  evil, 
like  good,  does  not  cease  till  it  has  fulfilled  itself  in 
every  possible  consequence.  It  seems  even  more 
active  and  persistent.  Good  seems  to  satisfy  itself 
sometimes  in  the  direct  effect,  but  evil  winds 
sinuously  in  and  out,  and  reaches  round  and  over  and 
under  its  wretched  author,  and  strikes  him  in  every 
tender  and  fatal  place,  with  an  ingenuity  in  finding 
the  places  out  that  seems  truly  of  hell.  Hewson 
thought  he  had  paid  the  principal  of  his  debt  in  full 
through  the  hurt  to  his  vanity  in  failing  to  gain  any 
sort  of  consequence  from  his  apparition,  but  the  in 
terest  of  his  debt  had  accumulated,  and  the  sorest 
pinch  was  in  paying  the  interest.  His  penalty  took 
the  form  that  was  most  of  all  distasteful  to  him :  the 


HIS    APPARITION.  51 

form  of  publicity  in  the  Sunday  edition  of  a  news 
paper.  A  young  lady  attached  to  the  staff  of  this 
journal  had  got  hold  of  his  story,  and  had  made  her 
reporter's  Story  of  it,  which  she  imaginatively  cast  in 
the  shape  of  an  interview  with  Hewson.  But  worse 
than  this,  and  really  beyond  the  vagary  of  the  wildest 
nightmare,  she  gave  St.  Johnswort  as  the  scene  of  the 
apparition,  with  all  the  circumstances  of  the  supposed 
burglary,  while  tastefully  disguising  Hewson's  iden- 
ity  in  the  figure  of  A  Well-Kuown  Society-man. 

When  Hewson  read  this  Story  (and  it  seemed  to 
him  that  no  means  of  bringing  it  to  his  notice  at  the 
club,  and  on  the  street,  and  by  mail  was  left 
unemployed),  he  had  two  thoughts:  one  was  of  St. 
John,  and  one  was  of  Miss  Hernshaw.  In  all  his 
exploitations  of  his  experience  he  had  carefully,  he 
thought  religiously,  concealed  the  scene,  except  that 
one  only  time  when  Miss  Hernshaw  suddenly  got  it 
out  of  him  by  that  demand  of  hers,  "  Was  it  that 
morning  at  St.  Johnswort  when  you  got  up  so  early 
and  went  for  a  cup  of  coffee  at  the  inn  ? "  He  had 
confided  so  absolutely  in  her  that  his  admission  had 
not  troubled  him  at  the  time,  and  it  had  not  troubled 
him  since,  till  now  when  he  found  the  fact  given  this 
hideous  publicity,  and  knew  that  it  could  have  be- 


52  HIS    APPARITION. 

come  known  only  through,  her:  through  her  who  had 
seemed  to  make  herself  the  protectress  of  his  appari 
tion  and  to  guard  it  with  indignation  even  against 
his  own  slight ! 

He  could  not  tell  himself  what  to  think  of  her,  and 
in  this  disability  he  had  at  least  the  sad  comfort  of 
literally  thinking  nothing  of  her;  but  he  could  not 
keep  his  thoughts  away  from  St.  John.  It  appeared 
to  him  that  he  thought  and  lived  nothing  else  till  his 
dread  concreted  itself  in  the  letter  which  came  from 
St.  John  as  soon  as  that  fatal  newspaper  could  reach 
him,  and  his  demand  for  an  explanation  could  come 
back  to  Hewson.  He  wrote  from  St.  Johnswort, 
where  he  had  already  gone  for  the  season,  and  he 
assumed,  as  no  doubt  he  had  a  right  to  do,  that  the 
whole  thing  was  a  fake,  and  that  if  Hewson  was 
hesitating  about  denying  it  for  fear  of  giving  it  fur 
ther  prominence,  or  out  of  contempt  for  it,  he  wished 
that  he  would  not  hesitate.  There  were  reasons, 
which  would  suggest  themselves  to  Hewson,  why  the 
thing,  if  merely  and  entirely  a  fake,  should  be  very 
annoying,  and  he  thought  that  it  would  be  best  to 
make  the  denial  immediate  and  imperative.  To  this 
end  he  advised  Ilewson's  sending  the  newspaper 
people  a  lawyer's  letter;  with  the  ulterior  trouble 


HIS    APPARITION.  53 

which  this  would  intimate  they  would  move  in  the 
matter  with  a  quickened  conscience. 

Apparently  St.  John  was  very  much  in  earnest, 
and  Hewson  would  eagerly  have  lied  out  of  it,  he  felt 
in  sudden  depravity,  from  a  just  regard  for  St.  John's 
right  to  privacy  in  his  own  premises,  but  no  lying, 
not  the  boldest,  not  the  most  ingenious,  could  now 
avail.  Scores  of  people  could  witness  that  they  had 
heard  Hewson  tell  the  story  at  first  hand ;  at  second 
hand  hundreds  could  still  more  confidently  affirm  its 
truth.  But  if  he  admitted  the  truth  of  the  fact  and 
denied  merely  that  it  had  happened  at  St.  Johnswort, 
he  would  have  Miss  Hernshaw  to  deal  with  and  what 
could  he  hope  from  truth  so  relentless  as  hers  ?  She 
was  of  a  moral  make  so  awful  that  if  he  ventured  to 
deny  it  without  appeal  for  her  support  (which  was 
impossible),  she  was  quite  capable  of  denying  his 
denial. 

He  did  the  only  thing  he  could.  He  wrote  to  St. 
John  declaring  that  the  newspaper  story,  though 
utterly  false  in  its  pretensions  to  be  an  inteiview  with 
him,  was  true  in  its  essentials.  The  thing  had  really 
happened,  he  had  seen  an  apparition,  and  he  had 
seen  it  at  St.  Johnswort  that  morning  when  St.  John 
supposed  his  house  to  have  been  invaded  by 


54  HIS   APPARITION. 

burglars.  He  vainly  turned  over  a  thousand  depre 
catory  expressions  in  his  mind,  with  which  to  soften 
the  blow  but  he  let  his  letter  go  without  including 


one. 


X. 

A  WEEK  of  silence  passed,  and  then  one  night  St. 
John  himself  appeared  at  Hewson's  apartment.  Hew- 
son  almost  knew  that  it  was  his  ring  at  the  door,  and 
in  the  tremulous  note  of  his  voice  asking  the  man  if 
he  were  at  home,  he  recognized  the  great  blubbery 
fellow's  most  plaintive  mood. 

"  Well,  Hewson,  "  he  whimpered,  without  staying 
for  any  form  of  greeting  when  they  stood  face  to 
face,  "  this  has  been  a  terrible  business  for  me.  You 
can't  imagine  how  it's  broken  me  up  in  every  di 
rection.  " 

"  I — I'm  afraid  I  can,  St.  John,  "  Hewson  began, 
but  St.  John  cut  him  off. 

"  Oh,  no,  you  can't.  Look  here  !  "  He  showed  a 
handful  of  letters.  "  All  from  people  who  had  prom 
ised  to  stay  with  me,  taking  it  back,  since  that 
infernal  interview  of  yours,  or  from  people  who  hadn't 
answered  before,  saying  they  can't  come.  Of  course 


56  HIS     APPARITION. 

they  make  all  sorts  of  civil  excuses.  I  shouldn't 
know  what  to  do  with  these  people  if  any  of  them 
came.  There  isn't  a  servant  left  on  the  place,  except 
the  gardener  who  lives  in  his  own  house,  and  the 
groom  who  sleeps  in  the  stable.  For  the  last  three 
days  I've  had  to  take  my  meals  at  that  infernal  inn 
where  you  got  your  coffee.  " 

"  Is  it  so  bad  as  that  ?  "  Hewson  gasped. 

"Yes,  it  is.     It's  so  bad   that  sometimes  I  can't 
realize  it.     Do  you  actually  mean  to  tell  me,  Hewson 
that  you  saw  a  ghost  in  my  house  ?  " 

"  I  never  said  a  ghost.  I  said  an  apparition.  I 
don't  know  what  it  was.  It  may  have  been  an  optical 
delusion.  I  call  it  an  apparition,  because  that's  the 
shortest  way  out.  You  know  I'm  not  a  spiritualist.  " 

"Yes,  that's  the  devil  of  it,"  said  St.  John. 
"  That's  the  very  thing  that  makes  people  believe  it 
is  a  ghost.  There  isn't  one  of  them  that  don't  say  to 
himself  and  the  other  fellows  that  if  a  cool,  clear 
headed  chap  like  you  saw  something  queer,  it  must 
have  been  a  ghost ;  and  so  they  go  on  knocking  my 
house  down  in  price  till  I  don't  believe  it  would  fetch 
fifteen  hundred  under  the  hammer  to-morrow.  It's 
simply  ruin  to  me.  " 

"  Ruin  ?  "  Hewson  echoed. 


HIS    APPARITION.  57 

"  Yes,  ruin,  "  St.  John  repeated.  "  Before  this 
thing  caine  out  I  refused  twenty-five  thousand  for  the 
place,  because  I  knew  I  could  get  twenty-eight  thous 
and.  Now  I  couldn't  get  twenty-eight  hundred. 
Couldn't  you  understand  that  the  reputation  of  being 
haunted  simply  plays  the  devil  with  a  piece  of 
property  ? " 

"Yes;  yes,  I  did  understand  that,  and  for  that 
very  reason  I  was  always  careful — " 

"Careful!  To  tell  people  that  you  had  seen  a 
ghost  in  my  house  ?  " 

"  No  !  Not  to  tell  them  where  1  had  seen  a  ghost. 
I  never — " 

"How  did  it  get  out  then ? " 

"  I, "  Hewson  began,  and  then  he  stood  with  his 
mouth  open,  unable  to  close  it  for  the  articulation  of 
the  next  word,  which  he  at  last  huskily  whispered 
forth,  "  can't  tell  you.  " 

"  Can't  tell  me  ? "  wailed  St.  John.  "  Well,  I  call 
that  pretty  rough ! " 

"  It  is  rough,  "  Hewson  admitted ;  "  and  Heaven 
knows  that  I  would  make  it  smooth  if  I  could.  I 
never  once — except  once  only — mentioned  your  place 
in  connection  with  the  matter.  I  was  scrupulously 
careful  not  to  do  so,  for  I  did  imagine  something  like 


58  HIS    APPARITION. 

what  has  happened.  I  would  do  anything — any 
thing — in  reparation.  But  I  can't  even  tell  you  how 
the  name  of  your  place  got  out  in  the  connection, 
though  certainly  you  have  a  right  to  ask  and  to  know. 
The  circumstances  were — peculiar.  The  person — was 
one  that  I  wouldn't  have  dreamt  was  capable  of  re 
peating  it.  It  was  as  if  I  had  said  the  words  over 
to  myself.  " 

"  Well,  I  can't  understand  all  that,  "  said  St.  John, 
with  rueful  sulkiness,  from  which  he  brisked  up  to 
ask,  as  if  by  a  sudden  inspiration,  "If  it  was  only  to 
one  person,  why  couldn't  you  deny  it,  and  throw  the 
onus  on  the  other  fellow  ?  "  He  looked  up  at  Hew- 
son,  standing  nerveless  before  him,  from  where  he  lay 
mournfully  wallowing  in  an  easy-chair,  as  if  now  for 
the  first  time,  there  might  be  a  gleam  of  hope  for 
them  both  in  some  such  notion. 

Hewson  slowly  shook  his  head.  "  It  wouldn't  work. 
The  person — isn't  that  kind  of  person." 

"  Why,  but  see  here,  "  St.  John  urged.  "  There 
must  be  something  in  the  fellow  that  you  can  appeal 
to.  If  you  went  and  told  him  how  it  was  playing 
the  very  deuce  with  me  pecuniarily,  he  would  see  the 
necessity  of  letting  you  deny  it,  and  taking  the  con 
sequences,  if  he  was  anything  of  a  man  at  all.  " 


HIS    APPARITION.  59 

"  He  isn't  anything  of  a  man  at  all, "  said  Hewson, 
in  mechanical  and  melancholy  parody. 

"Then  in  Heaven's  name  what  is  he?"  demanded 
St.  John,  savagely. 

"  A  woman.  " 

"  Oh  !  "  St.  John  fell  back  in  his  chair.  But  he 
pulled  himself  up  again  with  a  sudden  renewal  of 
hope.  "  Why,  see  here  !  If  she's  the  right  kind  of 
woman,  she'll  enjoy  denying  the  story,  and  putting 
the  people  in  the  wrong  that  have  circulated  it !  " 

Hewson  shook  his  head  in  rejection  of  the  general 
principle,  while,  as  to  the  particular  instance,  he  could 
only  say :  "  She  isn't  that  kind.  She's  the  kind  that 
would  rather  die  herself,  and  let  everybody  else  die, 
than  be  party  to  any  sort  of  deception. ' 

"She  must  be  a  queer  woman,"  St.  John  bewailed 
himself,  looking  at  the  point  of  his  cigar,  and  discov 
ering  to  his  surprise  that  it  was  out.  He  did  not 
attempt  to  light  it.  "  Of  course,  I  can't  ask  you  who 
she  is ;  but  why  shouldn't  I  see  her,  and  try  what  / 
can  do  with  her?  I'm  the  one  that's  the  principal 
sufferer  in  this  matter,  "  he  added,  perhaps  seeing 
refusal  in  Ilewson's  troubled  eye. 

"  Because — for  one  reason — she's  in  London.  " 

"  Oh   Lord  !  "  St.  John  lamented. 


60  HIS    APPARITION. 

"  But  if  she  were  here  in  New  York,  I  couldn't  al 
low  it, "  he  continued.  "  It  was  in  confidence 
between  us.  " 

"  She  doesn't  seem  to  have  thought  so,  "  said  St. 
John,  with  sarcasm  which  Ilewson  could  not  resent. 

"  There's  only  one  thing  for  me  to  do,  "  said  Hew- 
son,  who  had  been  thinking  the  point  over,  and  saw 
no  other  way  out  for  him  as  a  gentleman,  or  even 
merely  as  a  just  man.  He  was  not  rich,  and  in  the 
face  of  the  mounting  accumulations  of  other  men  he 
had  grown  comparatively  poor,  without  actually  losing 
money,  since  he  had  begun  to  lead  the  life  which  had 
long  been  his  ideal.  After  carefully  ascertaining  at 
the  time  in  question  that  he  had  sufficient  income 
from  inherited  means  to  live  without  his  profession, 
he  had  closed  his  law-office  without  shutting  many 
clients  out,  and  had  contributed  himself  to  the  forma 
tion  of  a  leisure  class,  which  he  conceived  was 
regrettably  lacking  in  our  conditions.  He  had  taste, 
he  had  reading,  he  had  a  pretty  knowledge  of  the 
world  from  travel,  he  had  observed  manners,  and  it 
seemed  to  him  that  he  might  not  immodestly  pretend 
to  supply,  as  far  as  one  man  went,  a  well-recognized 
want. 

Hitherto  he  had  been  able  te  live  up  to  his  ideal 


HIS    APPARITION.  61 

with  sufficient  satisfaction,  and  in  proposing  to  him 
self  never  to  marry,  but  to  grow  old  gradually  and 
gracefully  as  a  bachelor  of  adequate  income,  he  saw 
no  difficulties  in  his  way  for  the  future,  until  this  af 
fair  of  the  apparition.  If  now  he  incurred  the  chances 
of  an  open  change  in  his  way  of  living — the  end  was 
simply  a  question  of  very  little  time.  lie  must  not 
only  declass,  he  must  depatriate  himself,  for  he  would 
not  have  the  means  of  living  even  much  more  econom 
ically  than  he  now  lived  in  New  York,  if  he  did  what 
a  sense  of  honor,  of  just  responsibility  urged  him  to 
do  with  regard  to  St.  John. 

He  would  have  been  glad  of  any  interposition  of 
Providence  that  would  have  availed  him  against  his 
obvious  duty.  He  would  have  liked  to  recall  the 
words  saying  that  there  was  only  one  thing  for  him 
to  do,  but  he  could  not  recall  them  and  he  was  forced 
to  go  on.  "  Will  you  sell  me  your  place  ?  "  he  said 
to  St.  John,  colorlessly. 

"  Sell  you  my  place  ?     What  do  you  mean  ?  " 

"  Simply  that  if  you  will,  I  shall  be  glad  to  buy  it 
at  your  own  valuation.  " 

"  Oh,  look  here,  now,  Hewson  !  I  can't  let  you  do 
this,  "  St.  John  began,  trying  to  feel  a  magnanimity 
which  proved  impossible  to  him.  "  What  do  you 


62  HIS    APPARITION. 

want  with  my  place  ?  You  couldn't  get  anybody  to 
live  there  with  you.  " 

"  I  couldn't  afford  to  live  there  in  any  case, "  said 
Hewson;  "but  I  am  entirely  willing  to  risk  the 
purchase. " 

Was  it  possible  that  Hewson  knew  something  of 
the  neighborhood  or  its  future,  which  encouraged  him 
to  take  the  chances  of  the  property  appreciating  in 
value  ?  This  thought  passed  through  St.  John's  mind, 
and  he  was  not  the  man  to  let  himself  be  overreached 
in  a  deal.  "  The  place  ought  to  be  worth  thirty 
thousand,  "  he  said,  for  a  bluff. 

It  was  a  relief  for  Hewson  to  feel  ashamed  of  St. 
John  instead  of  himself,  for  a  moment.  "  Very  well, 
I'll  give  you  thirty  thousand.  " 

St.  John  examined  himself  for  a  responsive  generos 
ity.  The  most  he  could  say  was,  "You're  doing  this 
because  of  what  I'd  said. " 

"  What  does  it  matter  ?  I  make  you  a  bonafide 
offer.  I  will  give  you  thirty  thousand  dollars  for  St. 
Johnswort,  "  said  Hewson,  haughtily.  "  I  ask  you 
to  sell  me  that  place.  I  cannot  see  that  it  will  ever 
be  any  good  to  me,  but  I  can  assure  you  that  it  would 
be  a  far  worse  burden  for  me  to  carry  round  the  sense 
of  having  injured  you,  however  unwillingly — God 


HIS    APPARITION.  63 

knows  I  never  meant  you  harm ! — than  to  shoulder 
the  chance  of  your  place  remaining  worthless  on  my 
hands. " 

St.  John  caught  at  the  hope  which  the  form  of 
words  suggested.  "  If  anything  can  bring  it  up,  it 
will  be  the  fact  that  you  have  bought  it.  Such  a 
thing  would  give  the  lie  to  that  ridiculous  story,  as 
nothing  else  could.  Every  one  will  see  that  a  house 
can't  be  very  badly  haunted,  if  the  man  that  the 
ghost  appeared  to  is  willing  to  buy  it. " 

"  Perhaps,  "  said  Hewson  sadly. 

"  No  perhaps  about  it, "  St.  John  retorted,  all  the 
more  cheerfully  because  he  would  have  been  glad  be 
fore  this  incident  to  take  twenty  thousand  for  his 
place.  "  It's  just  on  the  borders  of  Lenox,  and  it's 
bound  to  come  up  when  this  blows  over.  "  He  talked 
on  for  a  time  in  an  encouraging  strain,  while  Hewson, 
standing  with  his  back  against  the  mantel,  looked 
absently  down  upon  him.  St.  John  was  inwardly 
struggling  through  all  to  say  that  Hewson  might  have 
the  property  for  twenty-eight  thousand,  but  he  could 
not.  Possibly  he  made  himself  believe  that  he  was 
letting  it  go  a  great  bargain  at  thirty ;  at  any  rate  he 
ended  by  saying,  "  Well,  it's  yours — if  you  really 
mean  it. " 


64  HIS    APPARITION. 

"  I  mean  it,  "  said  Ilewson. 

St.  John  floundered  up  out  of  his  chair  with  seal- 
like  struggles.  "  Do  you  want  the  furniture  ? "  he 
panted. 

u  The  furniture  ?  Yes,  why  not  ? "  said  Hewson. 
He  did  not  seem  to  know  what  he  was  saying,  or  to 
care. 

"  I  will  put  that  in  for  a  mere  nominal  considera 
tion — the  rugs  alone  are  worth  the  money — say  a 
thousand  more. " 

Hewson's  man  came  in  with  a  note.  "  The  mes 
senger  is  waiting,  sir,  "  he  said. 

Hewson  was  aware  of  wondering  that  he  had  not 
heard  any  ring.  "  Will  you  excuse  me  ?  "  he  said, 
toward  St.  John. 

"  By  all  means, "  said  St.  John. 

Hewson  opened  the  note,  and  read  it  with  an  ex 
pression  which  can  only  be  described  as  a  radiant 
frown.  He  sat  down  at  his  desk,  and  wrote  an  an 
swer  to  the  note,  and  gave  it  to  his  man,  who  was  still 
waiting.  Then  he  said  to  St.  John,  "  What  did  you 
say  the  rugs  were  worth  ? " 

"  A  thousand.  " 

"  I'll  take  them.  And  what  do  you  want  for  the 
rest  of  the  furniture  ? " 


HIS   APPARITION.  65 

Clearly  he  had  not  understood  that  the  furniture, 
rugs,  and  all,  had  been  offered  to  him  for  a  thousand 
dollars.  But  what  was  a  man  in  St.  John's  place  to 
do  ?  As  it  was  he  was  turning  himself  out  of  house 
and  home  for  Hewson,  and  that  was  sacrifice  enough. 
He  hesitated,  sighed  deeply,  and  then  said,  "  Well,  I 
will  throw  all  that  in  for  a  couple  of  thousand  more.  " 

"All  right,"  said  Hewson,  "I  will  give  it.  Have 
the  papers  made  out  and  I  will  have  the  money  ready 
at  once.  " 

"  Oh,  there's  no  hurry  about  that,  my  dear  fellow,  " 
said  St.  John,  handsomely. 


XL 

HEWSON'S  note  was  from  Mrs.  Rock,  asking  him  to 
breakfast  with  her  at  the  Walholland  the  next  morn 
ing.  She  said  that  they  were  just  off  the  steamer, 
which  had  got  in  late,  and  they  had  started  so  sudden 
ly  from  London  that  she  had  not  had  time  to  write 
and  have  her  apartment  opened.  She  came  to  business 
in  the  last  sentence  where  she  said  that  Miss  Hernshaw 
joined  her  in  kind  remembrances,  and  wished  her  to 
say  that  he  must  not  fail  them,  or  if  he  could  not 
come  to  breakfast,  to  let  them  know  at  what  hour 
during  the  day  he  would  be  kind  enough  to  call ;  it 
was  very  important  they  should  see  him  at  the  earliest 
possible  moment. 

Hewson  instantly  decided  that  this  summons  was 
related  to  the  affair  of  his  apparition,  without  imagin 
ing  how  or  why,  and  when  Miss  Hernshaw  met  him, 
and  almost  before  she  could  say  that  Mrs.  Rock  would 
be  down  in  a  moment,  began  with  it,  he  made  no  feint 
of  having  come  for  anything  else. 


\VHY,   THERE   ISN'T   ANY    PUNISHMENT    SEVERE   ENOUGH 
FOR  A   CRIME  LIKE  THAT'" 


HIS    APPARITION.  67 

As  he  entered  the  door  of  Mrs.  Rock's  parlor,  where 
the  breakfast  table  was  laid,  the  girl  came  swiftly  to 
ward  him,  with  the  air  of  having  turned  from  watch 
ing  for  him  at  the  window.  "  Well,  what  do  you 
think  of  me  1 "  she  demanded  as  soon  as  she  had  got 
over  Mrs.  Rock's  excuses  for  having  her  receive  him. 
He  had  of  course  to  repeat,  "  What  do  I  think  of 
you  ? "  but  he  knew  perfectly  what  she  meant. 

She  disdained  to  help  him  pretend  that  he  did  not 
know.  "  It  was  I  who  told  that  horrible  woman  about 
your  experience  at  St.  Johnswort.  I  didn't  dream 
that  she  was  an  interviewer,  but  that  doesn't  excuse 
me,  and  I  am  willing  to  take  any  punishment  for  my 
— I  don't  know  what  to  call  it — mischief.  " 

She  was  so  intensely  ready,  so  magnificently  pre 
pared  for  the  stake,  if  that  should  be  her  sentence, 
that  Hewson  could  not  help  laughing.  "  Why  there 
isn't  any  punishment  severe  enough  for  a  crime  like 
that, "  he  began,  but  she  would  not  allow  him  to  trifle 
with  the  matter. 

"  Oh,  I  didn't  think  you  would  be  so  uncandid  ! 
The  instant  I  read  that  interview  I  made  Mrs.  Rock 
get  ready  to  come.  And  we  started  the  first  steamer. 
It  seemed  to  me  that  I  could  not  eat  or  sleep,  till  I 
had  seen  you  and  told  you  what  I  had  done  and — 

5 


68  HIS    APPARITION. 

taken  the  consequences.  And  now  do  you  think  it 
right  to  turn  it  off  as  a  joke  ? " 

"  I  don't  wish  to  make  a  joke  of  it,  "  said  Hewson, 
gravely,  in  compliance  with  her  mood.  "  But  I  don't 
understand,  quite,  how  you  could  have  got  the  story 
over  there  in  time  for  you — " 

"It  was  cabled  to  their  London  edition — that's 
what  it  said  in  the  paper ;  and  by  this  time  they  must 
have  it  in  Australia, "  said  Miss  Hemshaw,  with  un 
relieved  severity. 

"  Oh  !  "  said  Hewson,  giving  himself  time  to  realize 
that  he  was  the  psychical  hero  of  two  hemispheres. 
"  Well, "  he  resumed  "  what  do  you  expect  me  to 
say?" 

"  I  don't  know  what  I  expect.  I  expected  you  to 
say  something  without  my  prompting  you.  You  know 
that  it  was  outrageous  for  me  to  talk  about  your  ap 
parition  without  your  leave,  and  to  be  the  means  of 
its  getting  into  the  newspapers.  " 

"  I'm  not  sure  you  were  the  means.  I  have  told 
the  story  a  hundred  times,  myself. " 

"  But  that  doesn't  excuse  me.  You  knew  the  kind 
of  people  to  tell  it  to,  and  I  didn't. " 

"  Oh,  I  am  afraid  I  was  willing  to  tell  it  to  all  kinds 
of  people — to  any  kind  that  would  listen.  " 


HIS  APPARITION.  69 

"  You  are  trying  to  evade  me,  Mr.  Hewson, "  she 
said,  with  a  severity  he  found  charming.  "  I  didn't 
expect  that  of  you.  " 

The  appeal  was  not  lost  upon  Hewson.  "What 
do  you  want  me  to  say  ?  " 

"  I  want  you, "  said  Miss  Hernshaw,  with  an  effect 
of  giving  him  another  trial,  "  to  say — to  acknowledge 
that  you  were  terribly  annoyed  by  that  interview.  " 

"  If  you  will  excuse  me  from  attaching  the  slight 
est  blame  to  you  for  it,  I  will  acknowledge  that  I  was 
annoyed.  " 

Miss  Hernshaw  drew  a  deep  breath  as  of  relief. 
"  I  will  arrange  about  the  blame, "  she  said  loftily. 
"  And  now  I  wish  to  tell  you  how  I  never  supposed 
that  girl  was  an  interviewer.  We  were  all  together 
at  an  artist's  house  in  Rome,  and  after  dinner,  we  got 
to  telling  ghost-stories,  the  way  people  do,  around  the 
fire,  and  I  told  mine — yours  I  mean.  And  before  we 
broke  up,  this  girl  came  to  me — it  was  while  we  were 
putting  on  our  wraps — and  introduced  herself,  and 
said  how  much  she  had  been  impressed  by  my  story 
— of  course,  I  mean  your  story — and  she  said  she 
supposed  it  was  made  up.  I  said  I  should  not  dream 
of  making  up  a  thing  of  that  kind,  and  that  it  was 
every  word  true,  and  I  had  heard  the  person  it  hap- 


70  HIS     APPARITION. 

pened  to  tell  it  himself.  I  don't  know !  I  was  vain 
of  having  heard  it,  so,  at  first  hand.  " 

"  I  can  understand,  "  said  Hewson,  sadly. 

"  And  then  I  told  her  who  the  person  was,  and 
where  it  happened — and  about  the  burglary.  You 
can't  imagine  how  silly  people  get  when  they  begin 
going  in  that  direction.  " 

"  I  am  afraid  I  can, "  said  Hewson. 

"  She  seemed  very  grateful  somehow ;  I  couldn't 
see  why,  but  I  didn't  ask;  and  then  I  didn't  think 
about  it  again  till  I  saw  it  in  that  awful  newspaper. 
She  sent  it  to  me  herself ;  she  was  such  a  simpleton ; 
she  thought  I  would  actually  like  to  see  it.  She 
must  have  written  it  down,  and  sent  it  to  the  paper, 
and  they  printed  it  when  they  got  ready  to;  she 
needed  the  money,  I  suppose.  Then  I  began  to  won 
der  what  you  would  say,  when  you  remembered  how 
I  blamed  you  for  telling  the  same  story — only  not 
half  so  bad — at  that  dinner.  " 

"  I  always  felt  you  were  quite  right,  "  said  Ilew- 
son.  "  I  have  always  thanked  you  in  my  own  mind 
for  being  so  frank  with  me.  " 

"Well,  and  what  do  you  think  now,  when  you 
know  that  I  was  ten  times  as  bad  as  you — ten  times 
as  foolish  and  vulgar ! " 


HIS     APPARITION.  71 

"  I  haven't  had  time  to  formulate  my  ideas  yet,  " 
Hewson  urged. 

"  You  know  perfectly  well  that  you  despise  me. 
Can  you  say  that  I  had  any  right  to  give  your  name  ? " 

"It  must  have  got  out  sooner  or  later.  I  never 
asked  any  one  not  to  mention  my  name  when  I  told 
the  story — " 

"  I  see  that  you  think  I  took  a  liberty,  and  I  did. 
But  that's  nothing.  That  isn't  the  point.  How  I  do 
keep  beating  about  the  bush  !  Mrs.  Rock  says  it  was 
a  great  deal  worse  to  tell  where  it  happened,  for  that 
would  give  the  place  the  reputation  of  being  haunted 
and  nobody  could  ever  live  there  afterwards,  for  they 
couldn't  keep  servants,  even  if  they  didn't  have  the 
creeps  themselves,  and  it  would  ruin  the  property.  " 

Hewson  had  not  been  able,  when  she  touched  upon 
this  point,  to  elude  the  keen  eye  with  which  she  read 
his  silent  thought. 

"  Is  that  true  ? "  she  demanded. 

"  Oh,  no ;  oh,  no,  "  he  began,  but  he  could  not 
frame  in  plausible  terms  the  lies  he  would  have  ut 
tered.  He  only  succeeded  in  saying,  "  Those  things 
soon  blow  over.  " 

"  Then  how, "  she  said,  sternly,  "  does  it  happen 
that  in  every  town  and  village,  almost,  there  are  houses 


72  HIS    APPARITION. 

that  you  can  hardly  hire  anybody  to  live  in,  because 
people  say  they  are  haunted  ?  No,  Mr.  Hewson,  it's 
very  kind  of  you,  and  I  appreciate  it,  but  you  can't 
make  me  believe  that  it  will  ever  blow  over,  about 
St.  Johnswort.  Have  you  heard  from  Mr.  St.  John 
since  ? " 

"  Yes, "  Hewson  was  obliged  to  own. 

"And  was  he  very  much  troubled  about  it?  I 
should  think  he  was  a  man  that  would  be,  from  the 
way  he  behaved  about  the  burglary.  Was  he  ?  "  she 
persisted,  seeing  that  Hewson  hesitated. 

"  Yes,  I  must  say  he  was.  " 

There  was  a  sound  of  walking  to  arid  fro  in  the 
adjoining  room,  a  quick  shutting  as  of  trunk-lids,  a 
noise  as  of  a  skirt  shaken  out,  and  steps  advanced  to 
the  door.  Miss  Hernshaw  ran  to  it  and  turned  the 
key  in  the  lock.  "  Not  yet,  Mrs.  Rock, "  she  called 
to  the  unseen  presence  within,  and  she  explained  to 
Hewson,  as  she  faced  him  again,  "  She  promised  that 
I  should  have  it  all  out  with  you  myself,  and  now  I'm 
not  going  to  have  her  in  here,  interrupting.  Well, 
did  he  write  to  you  ? " 

"  Yes,  he  wrote  to  me.  He  wanted  me  to  deny 
the  story." 

"  And  did  you  ?  " 


HIS    APPARITION.  73 

"  Of  course  not !  "  said  Hewson,  with,  a  note  of  in 
dignation.  "  It  was  true.  Besides  it  wouldn't  have 
been  of  any  use.  " 

"  No,  it  would  have  been  wicked  and  it  would  have 
been  useless.  And  then  what  did  he  say  ?  " 

"  Nothing. " 

"  Nothing  ?  And  you  have  never  heard  another 
word  from  him  ?  " 

"  Yes,  he  came  to  see  me  last  night.  " 

"  Here  in  New  York  ?     Is  he  here  yet  ? " 

"  I  suppose  so.  " 

"  Where  ? " 

"  I  believe  at  the  Overpark.  " 

Miss  Hernshaw  caught  her  breath,  as  if  she  were 
going  to  speak,  but  she  did  not  say  anything. 

"  Why  do  you  insist  upon  all  this,  Miss  Hernshaw  ? " 
he  entreated.  "  It  can  do  you  no  good  to  follow  the 
matter  up !  " 

"  Do  you  think  I  want  to  do  myself  good  ?  "  she 
returned.  "  I  want  to  do  myself  harm!  What  did 
he  say  when  he  came  to  see  you  ? " 

"  Well,  you  can  imagine,  "  said  Hewson,  not  able 
to  keep  out  of  his  tone  the  lingering  disgust  he  felt 
for  St.  John. 

"  He  complained  ?  " 


74  HIS    APPARITION. 

"  He  all  but  shed  tears,  "  said  Hewson,  recalled  to 
a  humorous  sense  of  St.  John's  behavior.  "  I  felt 
sorry  for  him ;  though,  "  he  added,  darkly,  "  I  can't 
say  that  I  do  now.  " 

Miss  Hernshaw  didn't  seek  to  fathom  the  mystery 
of  his  closing  words.  "  Had  he  been  actually  incon 
venienced  by  that  thing  in  the  paper  ? " 

"  Yes — somewhat.  " 

"  How  much  ?  " 

"  Oh,  "  Hewson  groaned.     "  If  you  must  know — " 

"  I  must !     The  worst ! " 

"  It  had  fairly  turned  him  out  of  house  and  home. 
His  servants  had  all  left  him,  and  he  had  been  re 
duced  to  taking  his  meals  at  the  inn.  He  showed  me 
a  handful  of  letters  from  people  whom  he  had  asked 
to  visit  him,  withdrawing  their  acceptances,  or  making 
excuses  for  not  accepting.  " 

"  Ah  !  "  said  Miss  Hernshaw,  with  a  deep,  inward 
breath,  as  if  this  now  were  indeed  something  like  the 
punishment  she  had  expected.  "  And  will  it — did  he 
think — did  he  say  anything  about  the  pecuniary  ef 
fect — the — whether  it  would  hurt  the  property  ? " 

"  He  seemed  to  think  it  would,  "  answered  Hewson, 
reluctantly,  and  he  added,  unfortunately  for  his  gener 
ous  purpose,  "  I  really  can't  enter  upon  that  part.  " 


HIS  APPARITION.  75 

She  arched  her  eyebrows  in  grieved  surprise.  "  But 
that  is  the  very  part  that  I  want  you  to  enter  upon 
Mr.  Hewson.  You  must  tell  me,  now  !  Did  he  say 
that  it  had  injured  the  property  very  much  ?  " 

"  He  did,  but—" 

"  But  what  ?  " 

"  I  think  St.  John  is  a  man  to  put  the  worst  face  on 
that  matter." 

"  You  are  saying  that  to  keep  me  from  feeling 
badly.  But  I  ought  to  feel  badly — I  wish  to  feel 
badly.  I  suppose  he  said  that  it  wasn't  worth  any 
thing  now.  " 

"  Something  of  that  sort,  "  Ilewson  helplessly  ad 
mitted. 

"  Very  well,  then,  I  will  buy  it  for  whatever  he 
chooses  to  ask ! "  With  the  precipitation  which  char 
acterized  all  her  actions,  Miss  Hernshaw  rose  from  the 
chair  in  which  she  had  been  provisionally  sitting, 
pushed  an  electric  button  in  the  wall,  swirled  away  to 
the  other  side  of  the  room,  unlocked  the  door  behind 
which  those  sounds  had  subsided,  and  flinging  it  open, 
said,  "  You  can  come  out,  Mrs.  Rock ;  I've  rung  for 
breakfast.  " 

Mrs.  Rock  came  smoothly  forth,  with  her  vague 
eyes  wandering  over  every  other  object  in  the  room, 


76  HIS    APPARITION. 

till  they  rested  upon  Hewson,  directly  before  her. 
Then  she  gave  him  her  hand,  and  asked,  with  a  smile, 
as  if  taking  him  into  the  joke.  "  Well,  has  Rosalie 
had  it  out  with  you  ? " 

"  I  have  had  it  out  with  him,  Mrs.  Rock,  "  Miss 
Hernshaw  answered,  "  and  I  will  tell  you  all  about  it 
later.  Now  I  want  my  breakfast  " 


XII. 

HEWSON  ate  the  meal  before  him,  and  it  was  a 
very  good  one,  as  from  time  to  time  he  noted,  in  a 
daze  which  was  as  strange  a  confusion  of  the  two 
consciousnesses  as  he  had  ever  experienced.  What 
ever  the  convention  was  between  Miss  Hernshaw  and 
Mrs.  Rock  with  regard  to  the  matter  in  hand,  or  lately 
in  hand,  it  dropped,  after  a  few  uninterested  inquiries 
from  Mrs.  Rock,  who  was  satisfied,  or  seemed  so,  to 
know  that  Miss  Hernshaw  had  got  at  the  worst.  She 
led  the  talk  to  other  things,  like  the  comparative 
comforts  and  discomforts  of  the  line  to  Genoa  and 
the  line  to  Liverpool;  and  Hewson  met  her  upon 
these  polite  topics  with  an  apparent  fulness  of  inter 
est  that  would  have  deceived  a  much  more  attentive 
listener. 

All  the  time  he  was  arguing  with  Miss  Hernshaw 
in  his  nether  consciousness,  pleading  with  her  to  keep 
her  away  from  the  fact  that  he  had  himself  bought 


78  HIS    APPARITION. 

St.  Jolinswort,  until  lie  could  frame  some  fitting  form 
in  which  to  tell  her  that  lie  had  bought  it.  With  his 
outward  eyes,  he  saw  her  drooping  on  the  opposite 
side  of  the  table,  and  in  spite  of  her  declaration  that 
she  wanted  her  breakfast,  making  nothing  of  it,  after 
the  preliminary  melon,  while  to  his  inward  vision  she 
was  passionately  refusing,  by  every  charming  perver 
sity,  to  be  tempted  away  from  the  subject. 

As  the  Cunard  boats  always  get  in  on  Saturday, 
this  morrow  of  their  arrival  was  naturally  Sunday ; 
and  after  a  while  Hewson  fancied  symptoms  of  going 
to  church  in  Mrs.  Rock.  She  could  not  have  become 
more  vague  than  she  ordinarily  was,  but  her  wander 
ings  were  of  a  kind  of  devotional  character.  She 
spoke  of  the  American  church  in  Rome,  and  asked 
Hewson  if  he  knew  the  rector.  Then,  when  he  said 
he  was  afraid  he  was  keeping  her  from  going  to 
church,  she  said  she  did  not  know  whether  Rosalie 
intended  going.  At  the  same  time  she  rose  from  the 
table,  and  Hewson  found  that  he  should  not  be 
allowed  to  sit  down  again,  unless  by  violence.  He 
had  to  go  away,  and  he  went,  as  little  at  ease  in  his 
mind  as  he  very  well  could  be. 

He  was  no  sooner  out  of  the  house  than  he  felt  the 
necessity  of  returning.  He  did  not  know  how  or 


HIS    APPARITION.  79 

when  Miss  Hernshaw  would  write  to  St.  John,  but 
that  she  would  do  so,  he  did  not  at  all  doubt, 
and  then,  when  the  truth  came  out,  what  would  she 
think  of  him  ?  He  did  not  think  her  a  very  wise 
person ;  she  seemed  to  him  rather  a  wild  and  whirling 
person  in  her  ideals  of  conduct,  an  unbridled  and  un 
disciplined  person;  and  yet  he  was  aware  of  pro 
foundly  and  tenderly  respecting  her  as  a  creature  of 
the  most  inexpugnable  innocence  and  final  goodness. 
He  could  not  bear  to  have  her  feel  that  he  had  trifled 
with  her.  There  had  not  been  many  meetings 
between  them,  but  each  meeting  had  been  of  such 
event  that  it  had  advanced  their  acquaintance  far 
beyond  the  point  that  it  could  have  reached  through 
weeks  of  ordinary  association.  From  the  first  there 
had  been  that  sort  of  intimacy  which  exists  between 
spirits  which  encounter  in  the  region  of  absolute 
sincerity.  She  had  never  used  the  least  of  those  arts 
which  women  use  in  concealing  the  candor  of  their 
natures  from  men  unworthy  of  it ;  she  had  not  only 
practiced  her  rule  of  instant  and  constant  veracity, 
but  had  avowed  it,  and  as  it  were,  invited  his  judg 
ment  of  it.  Hitherto,  he  had  met  her  half-way  at 
least,  but  now  he  was  in  the  coil  of  a  disingenuousness 
which  must  more  and  more  trammel  him  from  her, 


80  HIS    APPARITION. 

unless  he  found  some  way  to  declare  the  fact  to  her. 

This  ought  to  have  been  an  easy  matter,  but  it  was 
not  easy ;  upon  reflection  it  grew  rather  more 
difficult.  Ilewson  did  not  see  how  he  could  avow  the 
fact,  which  he  wished  to  avow,  without  intolerable 
awkwardness ;  without  the  effect  of  boasting,  without 
putting  upon  her  a  burden  which  he  had  no  right  to 
put.  To  be  sure,  she  had  got  herself  in  for  it  all  by 
her  divine  imprudence,  but  she  had  owned  her  error 
in  that  as  promptly  as  if  it  had  been  the  blame  of 
some  one  else.  Still  Hewson  doubted  whether  her 
magnanimity  was  large  enough  to  go  round  in  the 
case  of  a  man  who  tried  to  let  his  magnanimity  come 
upon  her  with  any  sort  of  dramatic  surprise.  This 
was  what  he  must  seem  to  be  doing  if  he  now  left 
her  to  learn  from  another  how  he  had  kept  St.  John 
from  loss  by  himself  assuming  the  chance  of  depre 
ciation  in  his  property.  But  if  he  went  and  told  her 
that  he  had  done  it,  how  much  better  for  him  would 
that  be  2 

He  took  a  long,  unhappy  walk  up  into  the  Park, 
and  then  he  walked  back  to  the  Walholland.  By 
this  time  he  thought  Mrs.  Rock  and  Miss  Hernshaw 
must  have  been  to  church,  but  he  had  not  the  courage 
to  send  up  his  name  to  them.  He  waited  about  in 


HIS  APPARITION.  81 

the  region  of  the  dining-room,  in  the  senseless  hope 
that  it  would  be  better  for  him  to  surprise  them  on 
their  way  to  luncheon,  and  trust  to  some  chance  for 
introducing  his  confession,  than  to  seek  a  direct  inter 
view  with  Miss  Hernshaw.  But  they  did  not  come 
to  luncheon,  and  £hen  Hewson  had  the  clerk  send  up 
his  card. 

Word  came  back  that  the  ladies  would  see  him,  and 
he  followed  the  messenger  to  Mrs.  Rock's  apartment, 
where  if  he  was  surprised,  he  was  not  disappointed 
to  be  received  by  Miss  Hernshaw  alone. 

"Mrs.  Eock  is  lying  down,  "'she  explained,  "  but  I 
thought  that  it  might  be  something  important,  and 
you  would  not  mind  seeing  me.  " 

"  Not  at  all, "  said  Hewson,  with  what  seemed  to 
him  afterwards  superfluous  politeness,  and  then  they 
both  waited  until  he  could  formulate  his  business, 
Miss  Hernshaw  drooping  forward,  and  looking  down 
in  a  way  that  he  had  found  was  most  characteristic  of 
her.  "  It  is  something  important — at  least  it  is  im 
portant  to  me.  Miss  Hernshaw,  may  I  ask  whether 
you  have  done  anything — it  seems  a  very  unwarranta 
ble  question — about  St.  Johnswort  ?  " 

"  About  buying  it  ? " 

"  Yes.    It  will  be  useless  to  make  any  offer  for  it.  " 


82  HIS    APPARITION. 

"  Why  will  it  be  useless  to  do  that  ?  " 

"  Because — because  I  have  bought  it  myself.  " 

"  You  have  bought  it  ?  " 

"Yes;  when  he  came  to  me  last  night,  and  made 
those  representations —  Well,  in  short,  I  have  bought 
the  place." 

"  To  save  him  from  losing  money  by  that — story  ?  " 

"Well — yes.  I  ought  to  have  told  you  the  fact 
this  morning,  as  soon  as  you  said  you  would  buy  the 
place.  I  know  that  you  like  people  to  be  perfectly 
truthful.  But — I  couldn't — without  seeming  to — 
brag.  " 

"  I  understand,  "  said  Miss  Hernshaw. 

"  I  took  the  risk  of  your  writing  to  St.  John ;  but 
then  I  realized  that  if  he  answered  and  told  you  what 
I  ought  to  have  told  you  myself,  it  would  make  it 
worse,  and  I  came  back.  " 

"  I  don't  know  whether  it  would  have  made  it 
worse  ;  but  you  have  come  too  late,  "  said  Miss  Hern 
shaw.  "  I've  just  written  to  Mr.  St.  John.  " 

They  were  both  silent  for  what  llewson  thought  a 
long  time.  At  the  end  of  it,  he  asked,  "  Did  you — 
you  must  excuse  me — refer  to  me  at  all  ?  " 

"  No,  certainly  not.     Why  should  I  ?  " 

"  I  don't  know.     I  don't  know  that  it  would  have 


HIS    ArPAKlTION.  83 

mattered.  "  He  was  silent  again,  with  bowed  head ; 
when  he  looked  up  he  saw  tears  in  the  girl's  eyes. 

"  I  suppose  you  know  where  this  leaves  me  ?"  she 
said  gently. 

"  I  can't  pretend  that  I  don't,"  answered  Hewson. 
"  What  can  I  do  ? " 

"  You  can  sell  me  the  place  for  what  it  cost  you. " 

"  Oh,  no,  I  can't  do  that, "  said  Hewson. 

"  Why  do  you  say  that  ?  It  isn't  as  if  I  were  poor ; 
but  even  then  you  wouldn't  have  the  right  to  refuse 
me  if  I  insisted.  It  was  my  fault  that  it  ever  came 
out  about  St.  Johnswort.  It  might  have  come  out 
about  you,  but  the  harm  to  Mr.  St.  John — I  did  that, 
and  why  should  you  take  it  upon  yourself  ? " 

"  Because  I  was  really  to  blame  from  the  beginning 
to  the  end.  If  it  had  not  been  for  my  pitiful  wish  to 
shine  as  the  confidant  of  mystery,  nothing  would  have 
been  known  of  the  affair.  Even  when  you  asked  me 
that  night  if  it  had  not  happened  at  St.  Johnswort,  I 
know  now  that  I  had  a  wretched  triumph  in  saying 
that  it  had,  and  I  was  so  full  of  this  that  I  did  not 
think  to  caution  you  against  repeating  what  I  had 
owned.  " 

"  Yes,  "  said  the  girl,  with  her  unsparing  honesty, 
"  if  you  had  given  me  any  hint,  I  would  not  have  told 

6 


84  HIS  APPARITION. 

for  the  world.  Of  course  I  did  not  think — a  girl 
wouldn't — of  the  effect  it  would  have  on  the  property.  " 

"  No,  you  wouldn't  think  of  that, "  said  Hewson. 
Though  he  agreed  with  her,  he  would  have  preferred 
that  she  should  continue  to  blame  herself ;  but  he 
took  himself  severely  in  hand  again.  "  So,  you  see, 
the  fault  was  altogether  mine,  and  if  there  is  to  be 
any  penalty  it  ought  to  fall  upon  me.  " 

"Yes,"  said  Miss  Hernshaw,  "and  if  there  has 
been  a  fault  there  ought  to  be  a  penalty,  don't  you 
think  ?  It  would  have  been  no  penalty  for  me  to  buy 
St.  Johnswort.  My  father  wouldn't  have  minded  it.  " 
She  blushed  suddenly,  and  added,  "  I  don't  mean 
that —  You  may  be  so  rich  that —  I  think  I  had  bet 
ter  stop.  " 

"  No,  no  !  "  said  Hewson,  amused,  and  glad  of  the 
relief.  "  Go  on.  I  will  tell  you  anything  you  wish 
to  know. " 

"  I  don't  wish  to  know  anything,  "  said  Miss  Hern 
shaw,  haughtily. 

Her  words  seemed  to  put  an  end  to  an  interview 
for  which  there  was  no  longer  any  excuse. 

Hewson  rose.  "  Good-by,  "  he  said,  and  he  was 
rather  surprised  at  her  putting  out  her  hand,  but  he 
took  it  gratefully.  "  Will  you  make  my  adieux  to 


HIS   APPARITION.  85 

Mrs.  Rock  ?  And  excuse  my  coming  a  second  time 
to  trouble  you !  " 

"  I  don't  see  how  you  could  have  helped  coming, " 
said  Miss  Hernshaw,  "  when  you  thought  I  might 
write  to  Mr.  St.  John  at  once.  " 

Whether  this  implied  excuse  or  greater  blame, 
Hewson  had  to  go  away  with  it  as  her  final  response, 
and  he  went  away  certainly  in  as  great  discomfort  as 
he  had  come.  He  did  not  feel  quite  well  used ;  it 
seemed  to  him  that  hard  measure  had  been  dealt  him 
on  all  sides,  but  especially  by  Miss  Hernshaw.  After 
her  futile  effort  at  reparation  to  St.  John  she  had  ap 
parently  withdrawn  from  all  responsibility  in  the 
matter.  He  did  not  know  when  he  was  to  see  her 
again,  if  ever,  and  he  did  not  know  what  he  was  to 
wait  for,  if  anything. 

Still  he  had  the  sense  of  waiting  for  something,  or 
for  some  one,  and  he  went  home  to  wait.  There  he 
perceived  that  it  was  for  St.  John,  who  did  not  keep 
him  waiting  long.  His  nervous  ring  roused  Hewson 
half  an  hour  after  his  return,  and  St.  John  came  in 
with  a  look  in  his  greedy  eyes  which  Hewson  rightly 
interpreted  at  the  first  glance. 

"  See  here,  Hewson,  "  St.  John  said,  with  his  habit 
ual  lack  of  manners,  "  I  don't  want  to  get  you  in  for 


86  HIS  APPARITION. 

this  thing  at  St.  Johns  wort.  I  know  why  you  offered 
to  buy  the  place,  and  though-  of  course  you  are  the 
original  cause  of  the  trouble,  I  don't  feel  that  it's 
quite  fair  to  let  you  shoulder  the  consequences  al 
together.  " 

"  Have  I  been  complaining? "  Hewson  asked,  dryly. 

"  No,  and  that's  just  it.  You've  behaved  like  a 
little  man  through  it  all,  and  I  don't  like  to  take  ad 
vantage  of  you.  If  you  want  to  rue  your  bargain,  I'll 
call  it  off.  I've  had  some  fresh  light  on  the  matter, 
and  I  believe  I  can  let  you  off  without  loss  to  myself. 
So  that  if  it's  me  you're  considering — 

u  What's  your  fresh  light?  "  asked  Ilewson. 

"  Well,"  said  St.  John,  and  he  swallowed  rather 
hard,  as  if  it  were  a  pill,  "  the  fact  is,  I've  had  another 
offer  for  the  place.  " 

"  A  better  one  ?  " 

"  Well,  I  don't  know  that  I  can  say  that  it  is,  " 
answered  St.  John,  saving  his  conscience  in  the  form 
of  the  words. 

Hewson  knew  that  he  was  lying,  and  he  had  no 
mercy  on  him.  "  Then  I  believe  I'll  stick  to  my  bar 
gain.  You  say  that  the  other  party  hasn't  bettered 
my  offer,  and  so  I  needn't  withdraw  on  your  account. 
I'm  not  bound  to  withdraw  for  any  other  reason. " 


HIS  APPARITION.  87 

"  No,  of  course  not.  "  St.  John  rubbed  his  chin, 
as  if  hesitating  to  eat  his  words,  however  unpalatable  ; 
but  in  the  end  he  seemed  not  to  find  it  possible. 
"Well,  "  he  said,  disgustedly,  as  he  floundered  up  to 
take  his  leave,  "  I  thought  I  ought  to  come  and  give 
you  the  chance.  " 

"  It's  very  nice  of  you,  "  said  Hewson,  with  a  smile 
that  made  itself  a  derisive  grin  in  spite  of  him,  and  a 
laugh  of  triumph  when  the  door  had  closed  upon 
St.  John. 


XTII. 

AFTER  the  first  flush  of  Hewson's  triumph  had 
passed  he  began  to  enjoy  it  less,  and  by-and-by  he  did 
not  enjoy  it  at  all.  He  had  done  right  not  only  in 
keeping  St.  John  from  plundering  Miss  Hernshaw, 
but  in  standing  firm  and  taking  the  punishment  which 
ought  to  fall  upon  him  and  not  on  her.  But  the  sense 
of  having  done  right  sufficed  him  no  more  than  the 
sense  of  having  got  the  better  of  St.  John.  What 
was  lacking  to  him  ?  In  the  casuistry  of  the  moment, 
which  was  perhaps  rather  emotional  than  rational,  it 
appeared  to  Hewson  that  he  had  again  a  duty  toward 
Miss  Hernshaw,  and  that  his  feeling  of  dissatisfaction 
was  the  first  effect  of  its  non-fulfilment.  But  it  was 
clearly  impossible  that  he  should  go  again  to  see  her, 
and  tell  her  what  had  passed  between  him  and  St. 
John,  and  it  was  clearly  impossible  that  he  should 
write  and  tell  her  what  it  was  quite  as  clearly  her  right 
to  know  from  him.  If  he  went  to  her,  or  wrote  to 


HIS  APPARITION.  89 

her,  he  felt  himself  in  danger  of  wanting  to  shine  in 
the  affair,  as  her  protector  against  the  rapacity  of  St. 
John,  and  as  the  man  of  superior  quality  who  had 
outwitted  a  greedy  fellow.  The  fear  that  she  might 
not  admire  his  splendor  in  either  sort  caused  him  to 
fall  somewhat  nervelessly  back  upon  Providence ;  but 
if  the  moral  government  of  the  universe  finally  favored 
him  it  was  not  by  traversing  any  of  its  own  laws. 
By  the  time  he  had  determined  to  achieve  both  the 
impossibilities  which  formed  his  dilemma — had  de 
cided  to  write  to  Miss  Hernshaw  and  call  upon  her, 
and  leave  his  letter  in  the  event  of  failing  to  find  her 
—his  problem  was  as  far  solved  as  it  might  be,  by  the 
arrival  of  a  note  from  Miss  Hernshaw  herself,  hoping 
that  he  would  come  to  see  her  on  business  of  pressing 
importance. 

She  received  him  without  any  pretence  of  Mrs. 
Rock's  intermediary  presence,  and  put  before  him  a 
letter  which  she  had  received,  before  writing  him, 
from  St.  John,  and  which  she  could  not  answer  with 
out  first  submitting  it  to  him.  It  was  a  sufficiently 
straightforward  expression  of  his  regret  that  he  could 
not  accept  her  very  generous  offer  for  St.  Johnswort 
because  the  place  was  already  sold.  He  had  the  taste 
to  forbear  any  allusion  to  the  motives  which  (she  told 


90  HIS    APPARITION. 

Hewson)  she  had  said  prompted  her  offer ;  but  then 
he  became  very  darkling  and  sinuous  in  a  suggestion 
that  if  Miss  Hernshaw  wished  to  have  her  offer  known 
as  hers  to  the  purchaser  of  St.  Johnswort  he  would 
be  happy  to  notify  him  of  it. 

"  You  see, "  she  eagerly  commented  to  Hewson, 
"  he  does  not  give  your  name ;  but  I  know  who  it  is, 
though  I  did  not  know  when  I  made  him  my  offer. 
I  must  answer  his  letter  now,  and  what  shall  I  say  ? 
Shall  I  tell  him  I  know  who  it  is  ?  I  should  like  to ; 
I  hate  all  concealments !  Will  it  do  any  harm  to  tell 
him  I  know  ?  " 

Hewson  reflected.  "  I  don't  see  how  it  can.  I 
was  trying  to  come  to  you,  when  I  got  your  note,  to 
say  that  St.  John  had  been  to  see  me,  and  offered  to 
release  me  from  my  offer,  because,  as  I  thought,  you 
had  made  him  a  better  one.  He's  amusingly  rapa 
cious,  St.  John  is.  " 

"  And  what  did  you — I  beg  your  pardon  !  " 
"  Oh,  not  at  all.    I  said  I  would  stand  to  my  offer.  " 
She   repressed,  apparently,  some  form  of  protest, 
and  presently  asked,  "  And  what  shall  I  say  ? " 

"  Oh,  if  you  like,  that  you  have  learned  who  the 
purchaser  of  St.  Johnswort  is,  and  that  you  know  he 
will  not  give  way.  " 


HIS    APPARITION.  91 

"  Well !  "  she  said,  with  a  quick  sigh,  as  of  disap 
pointment.  After  an  indefinite  pause,  she  asked, 
"  Shall  you  be  going  to  St.  Johiiswort? " 

"  Why,  I  don't  know,  "  Hewson  answered.  "  I  had 
thought  of  going  to  Europe.  But,  yes,  I  think  I  shall 
go  to  St.  Johnswort,  first,  at  any  rate.  One  can't  sim 
ply  turn  one's  back  on  a  piece  of  real  estate  in  that 
way,  "  he  said,  recognizing  a  fact  that  would  doubtless 
have  presented  itself  in  due  order  for  his  considera 
tion.  "  My  one  notion  was  to  forget  it  as  quickly  as 
possible. " 

"  I  should  not  think  you  would  want  to  do  that,  " 
said  the  girl,  seriously. 

"  No,  one  oughtn't  to  neglect  an  investment.  " 

"  I  don't  mean  that.  But  if  such  a  thing  had  hap 
pened  to  me,  there,  I  should  want  to  go  again  and 
again. " 

"  You  mean  the  apparition  ?  Did  I  tell  you  how  I 
had  always  had  the  expectation  that  I  should  see  it 
again,  and  perhaps  understand  it  ?  But  when  I  had 
behaved  so  shabbily  about  it,  I  began  to  feel  that  it 
would  not  come  again.  " 

"  If  I  were  in  your  place, "  said  the  girl,  "  I  should 
never  give  up ;  I  should  spend  my  whole  life  trying 
to  find  out  what  it  meant.  " 


92  HIS   APPARITION. 

"  Ah  !  "  lie  sighed.  "  I  wish  you  could  put  your 
self  in  my  place.  " 

"  I  wish  I  could,  "  she  returned,  intensely. 

They  looked  into  each  other's  faces. 

"  Miss  Hernshaw, "  he  demanded,  solemnly,  "  do 
you  really  like  people  to  say  what  they  think  ? " 

"  Of  course  I  do  !  " 

"  Then  I  wish  you  would  come  to  St.  Johnswort 
with  me !  " 

"  Would  that  do  ?  "  she  asked.     "  If  Mrs.  Rock—  " 

He  saw  how  far  she  was  from  taking  his  meaning, 
but  he  pushed  on.  "I  don't  want  Mrs.  Rock.  I 
want  you — you  alone.  Don't  you  understand  me  ?  I 
love  you.  I — of  course  it's  ridiculous !  We've  only 
met  three  or  four  times  in  our  lives,  but  I  knew  this 
as  well  the  first  moment  as  I  do  now.  I  knew  it 
when  you  came  walking  across  the  garden  that  morn 
ing,  and  I  haven't  known  it  any  better  since,  and  I 
couldn't  in  a  thousand  years.  But  of  course — " 

"  Sit  down, "  she  said,  wafting  herself  into  a  chair, 
and  he  obeyed  her.  "  I  should  have  to  tell  my  fath 
er,  "  she  began. 

"  Why,  certainly, "  and  he  sprang  to  his  feet  again. 

She  commanded  him  to  his  chair  with  an  imperative 
gesture.  "'I  have  got  to  find  out  what  I  think,  first, 


HIS  APPARITION.  93 

myself.  If  I  were  sure  that  I  loved  you — but  I  don't 
know.  I  believe  you  are  good.  I  believed  that  when 
they  were  all  joking  you  there  at  breakfast,  and  you 
took  it  so  nicely ;  I  have  always  believed  that  you 
were  good. " 

She  seemed  to  be  appealing  to  him  for  confirmation, 
but  he  could  not  very  well  say  that  she  was  right,  and 
he  kept  silent.  "  I  didn't  like  your  telling  that  story 
at  the  dinner,  and  I  said  so  ;  and  then  I  went  and  did 
the  same  thing,  or  worse ;  so  that  I  have  nothing  to 
say  about  that.  And  I  think  you  have  behaved  very 
nobly  to  Mr.  St.  John.  "  As  if  at  some  sign  of  protest 
in  Hewson,  she  insisted,  "  Yes,  I  do !  But  all  this 
doesn't  prove  that  I  love  you."  Again  she  seemed  to 
appeal  to  him,  and  this  time  he  thought  he  might 
answer  her  appeal. 

"  I  couldn't  prove  that  /  love  you,  but  I  feel  sure 
of  it.  " 

"  And  do  you  believe  that  we  ought  to  take  our 
feelings  for  a  guide  ? " 

"  That's  what  people  do,  "  he  ventured,  with  the 
glimmer  of  a  smile  in  his  eyes,  which  she  was  fixing 
so  earnestly  with  her  own. 

"  I  am  not  satisfied  that  it  is  the  right  way,  "  she 
answered.  "  If  there  is  really  such  a  thing  as  love 


94  HIS    APPARITION. 

there  ought  to  be  some  way  of  finding  it  out  besides 
our  feelings.  Don't  you  think  it's  a  thing  we  ought 
to  talk  sensibly  about  ? " 

"  Of  all  things  in  the  world ;  though  it  isn't  the 
custom.  " 

Miss  Hernshaw  was  silent  for  a  moment.  Then  she 
said,  "  I  believe  I  should  like  a  little  time.  " 

"  Oh,  I  didn't  expect  you  to  answer  me  at  once, — I  " 

"  But  if  you  are  going  to  Europe  ?  " 

"  I  needn't  go  to  Europe  at  all.  I  can  go  to  St. 
Johnswort,  and  wait  for  your  answer  there.  " 

"  It  might  be  a  good  while, "  she  urged.  "  I 
should  want  to  tell  my  father  that  I  was  thinking 
about  it,  and  he  would  want  to  see  you  before  he 
approved.  " 

"  Why,  of  course  !  " 

"  Not,  "  she  added,  "  that  it  would  make  any  dif 
ference,  if  I  was  sure  of  it  myself.  Pie  has  always 
said  that  he  would  not  try  to  control  me  in  such  a 
matter,  and  I  think  he  would  like  you.  I  do  like  you 
very  much  myself,  Mr.  Hewson,  but  I  don't  think  it 
would  be  right  to  say  I  loved  you  unless  I  could 
prove  it.  " 

Hewson  was  tempted  to  say  that  she  could  prove 
it  by  marrying  him,  but  he  had  not  the  heart  to  mock 


HIS   APPARITION.  95 

a  scruple  which  he  felt  to  be  sacred.  What  he  did 
say  was :  "  Then  I  will  wait  till  you  can  prove  it.  Do 
you  wish  me  not  to  see  you  again,  before  you  have 
made  up  your  mind  ?  " 

"  I  don't  know.  I  can't  see  what  harm  there  would 
be  in  our  meeting.  " 

"  No,  I  can't,  either, "  said  Hewson,  as  she  seemed 
to  refer  the  point  to  him.  "  Should  you  mind  my 
coming  again,  say,  this  evening  ?  " 

"  To-night  ?  "  She  reflected  a  moment.  "  Yes, 
come  to-night.  " 

When  he  came  after  dinner,  Hewson  was  sensible 
from  the  perfect  unconsciousness  of  Mrs.  Rock's  man 
ner  that  Miss  Hernshaw  had  been  telling  her.  Her 
habit  of  a  wandering  eye,  contributed  to  the  effect 
she  wished  to  produce,  if  this  were  the  effect,  and  her 
success  was  such  that  it  might  easily  have  deceived 
herself.  But  when  Mrs.  Rock,  in  a  supreme  exercise 
of  her  unconsciousness,  left  him  with  the  girl  for  a 
brief  interval  before  it  was  time  for  him  to  go,  Miss 
Hernshaw  said,  u  Mrs.  Rock  knows  about  it,  and  she 
says  that  the  best  way  for  me  to  find  out  will  be  to 
try  whether  I  can  live  without  you.  " 

"Was  that  Mrs,  Rock's  idea?"  asked  Hewson,  as 
gravely  as  he  could. 


96  HIS  APPARITION. 

"  No  it  was  mine ;  I  suggested  it  to  her ;  but  she 
approves  of  it.  Don't  you  like  it  ?  " 

"  Yes.  I  hope  I  sha'n't  die  while  you  are  trying  to 
live  without  me.  Shall  you  he  very  long  ?  "  She 
frowned,  and  he  hastened  to  say,  "  I  do  like  your 
idea ;  it's  the  best  way,  and  I  thank  you  for  giving 
me  a  chance.  " 

"We  are  going  out  to  my  father's  ranch  in  Colo 
rado,  at  once,  "  she  explained.  "  We  shall  start 
to-morrow  morning.  " 

"  Oh  !     May  I  come  to  see  you  off  ? " 

"  No,  I  would  rather  begin  at  once.  " 

"  May  I  write  to  you  ? ' 

"  I  will  write  to  you — when  I've  decided.  " 

She  gave  him  her  hand,  but  she  would  not  allow 
him  to  keep  it  for  more  than  farewell,  and  then  she 
made  him  stay  till  Mrs.  Rock  came  back,  and  take 
leave  of  her  too ;  he  had  frankly  forgotten  Mrs.  Rock, 
who  bade  him  adieu  with  averted  eyes,  and  many 
civilities  about  seeing  him  again.  She  could  hardly 
have  been  said  to  be  seeing  him  then. 


XIV. 

THE  difficulties  of  domestication  at  St.  Johnswort 
Lad  not  been  misrepresented  by  the  late  proprietor, 
Hewson  found,  when  he  went  to  take  possession  of 
his  estate.  He  thought  it  right  in  engaging  servants 
to  say  openly  that  the  place  had  the  reputation  of 
being  haunted,  and  if  he  had  not  thought  it  right  he 
would  have  thought  it  expedient,  for  he  knew  that  if 
he  had  concealed  the  fact  it  would  have  been  discov 
ered  to  them  within  twenty-four  hours  of  their  arrival. 
His  declaration  was  sufficient  at  once  with  most,  who 
recoiled  from  his  service  as  if  he  had  himself  been  a 
ghost ;  with  one  or  two  sceptics  who  seemed  willing 
to  take  the  risks  (probably  in  a  guilty  consciousness 
of  records  that  would  have  kept  them  out  of  other 
employ)  his  confession  that  he  had  himself  seen  the 
spectre  which  haunted  St.  Johnswort,  was  equally 
effective.  He  prevailed  at  last  against  the  fact  and 
his  own  testimony  with  a  Japanese,  who  could  not  be 


98  HIS    APPARITION. 

made  to  understand  the  objection  to  the  place,  and 
who  willingly  went  with  Hewson  as  his  valet  and 
general  house-workman.  With  the  wife  of  the  gard 
ener  coming  in  to  cook  for  them  during  the  long 
daylight,  he  got  on  in  as  much  comfort  as  he  could 
have  expected,  and  by  night  he  suffered  no  sort  of 
disturbance  from  the  apparition.  He  had  expected 
to  be  annoyed  by  believers  in  spiritualism,  and  other 
psychical  inquirers,  but  it  sufficed  with  them  to  learn 
from  him  that  he  had  come  to  regard  his  experience, 
of  which  he  had  no  more  question  now  than  ever,  as 
purely  subjective. 

It  seemed  to  Hewson,  in  the  six  weeks'  time  which 
he  spent  at  St.  Johnswort,  waiting  to  hear  from  Rosa- 
lie  (he  had  come  already  to  think  of  her  as  Rosalie), 
that  all  his  life  was  subjective,  it  passed  so  like  a 
dream.  He  had  some  outward  cares  as  to  the  place  ; 
he  kept  a  horse  in  the  stable,  where  St.  John  had 
kept  half  a  dozen,  and  he  had  the  gardener  look  after 
that  as  well  as  the  shrubs  and  vegetables ;  but  all  went 
on  in  a  suspensive  and  provisional  sort.  In  the  mean 
time  Rosalie's  charm  grew  upon  him ;  everything  that 
she  had  said  or  looked,  was  hourly  and  daily  sweeter 
and  dearer;  her  truth  was  intoxicating,  beyond  the 
lures  of  other  women,  in  which  the  quality  of  deceit 


HIS  APPARITION.  99 

had  once  fascinated  him.  Now,  so  late  in  his  youth 
ful  life,  he  realized  that  there  was  no  beauty  but  that 
of  truth,  and  he  pledged  himself  a  thousand  times 
that  if  she  should  say  she  could  not  live  without  him 
he  would  henceforward  live  for  truth  alone,  and  not 
for  the  truth  merely  as  it  was  in  her,  but  as  it  was  in 
everything.  In  those  days  he  learned  to  know  him 
self,  as  he  never  had  before,  and  to  put  off  a  certain 
shell  of  worldliness  that  had  grown  upon  him.  In  his 
remoteness  from  it,  New  York  became  very  distasteful 
to  him ;  he  thought  with  reluctance  of  going  back  to 
it ;  his  club,  which  had  been  Lis  home,  now  appeared 
a  joyless  exile ;  the  life  of  a  leisure  class,  which  he 
had  made  his  ideal,  looked  pitifully  mean  and  little 
in  the  retrospect ;  he  wondered  how  he  could  have 
valued  the  things  that  he  had  once  thought  worthy. 
He  did  not  know  what  he  should  replace  it  all  with, 
but  Rosalie  would  know,  in  the  event  of  not  being 
able  to  live  without  him.  In  that  event  there  was 
hardly  any  use  of  which  he  could  not  be  capable.  In 
any  other  event — he  surprised  himself  by  realizing 
that  in  any  other  event — still  the  universe  had  some 
how  more  meaning  than  it  once  had.  Somehow,  he 
felt  himself  an  emancipated  man. 

He  began  many   letters  to  Rosalie,  and  some  he 


100  HIS  APPARITION. 

finished  and  some  not,  but  he  sent  none  ;  and  when 
her  letter  came  at  last,  he  was  glad  that  he  had  waited 
for  it  in  implicit  trust  of  its  coming,  though  he  be 
lieved  she  would  have  forgiven  him  if  he  had  not  had 
the  patience.  The  letter  was  quite  what  he  could 
have  imagined  of  her.  She  said  that  she  had  put 
herself  thoroughly  to  the  test,  and  she  could  not  live 
without  him.  But  if  he  had  found  out  that  he  could 
live  without  her,  then  she  should  know  that  she  had 
been  to  blame,  and  would  take  her  punishment.  Ap 
parently  in  her  philosophy,  which  now  seemed  to  him 
so  divine,  without  punishment  there  must  be  perdi 
tion  ;  it  was  the  penalty  that  redeemed  ;  that  was  the 
token  of  forgiveness. 

Ilewson  hurried  out  to  Colorado,  where  he  found 
llernshaw  a  stout,  silent,  impersonal  man,  whose  no 
tion  of  the  paternal  office  seemed  to  be  a  ready 
acquiescence  in  a  daughter's  choice  of  a  husband ; 
he  appeared  to  think  this  could  be  best  expressed 
to  Hewson  in  a  good  cigar,  He  perceptibly  enjoyed 
the  business  details  of  the  affair,  but  he  enjoyed  des 
patching  them  in  the  least  possible  time  and  the 
fewest  words,  and  then  he  settled  down  to  the  pleasure 
of  a  superficial  passivity.  Hewson  could  not  make 


HIS    APPARITION. 


101 


oat  that  lie  regarded  his  daughter  as  at  all  an  unusual 
girl,  and  from  this  he  argued  that  her  mother  must 
have  been  a  very  unusual  woman.  His  only  reason 
for  doubting  that  Eosalie  must  have  got  all  her  origin 
ality  from  her  mother  was  something  that  fell  from 
Hernshaw  when  they  were  near  the  end  of  their  cigars. 
He  said  irrelevantly  to  their  talk  at  that  point,  "  I 
suppose  you  know  Rosalie  believes  in  that  ghost  of 
yours  ? " 

"  Was  it  a  ghost  ? — I've  never  been  sure,  myself,  " 
said  Hewson. 

"  How  do  you  explain  it  ? "  asked  his  prospective 
father-in-law. 

"  I  don't  explain  it.  I  have  always  left  it  just  as 
it  was.  I  know  that  it  was  a  real  experience.  " 

"  I  think  I  should  have  left  it  so,  too,  "  said  Hern 
shaw.  "  That  always  gives  it  a  chance  to  explain 
itself.  If  such  a  thing  had  happened  to  me  I  should 
give  it  all  the  time  it  wanted.  " 

"  Well,  I  haven't  hurried  it,  "  Hewson  suggested. 

"  What  I  mean, "  and  Hernshaw  stepped  to  the 
edge  of  the  porch  and  threw  the  butt  of  his  cigar  into 
the  darkness,  where  it  described  a  glimmering  arc,  "  is 
that  if  anything  came  to  me  that  would  help  shore  up 
my  professed  faith  in  what  most  of  us  want  to  believe 


102  HIS    APPAKITION. 

in,  I  would  take  the  common-law  view  of  it.  I  would 
believe  it  was  innocent  till  it  proved  itself  guilty.  I 
wouldn't  try  to  make  it  out  a  fraud  myself.  " 

"  I'm  afraid  that's  what  I've  really  done, "  said 
Hewson.  "  But  before  people  I've  put  up  a  bluff  of 
despising  it. " 

"  Oh,  yes,  I  understand  that, "  said  Ilernshaw. 
"  A  man  thinks  that  if  he  can  have  an  experience  like 
that  he  must  be  something  out  of  the  common,  and 
if  he  can  despise  it — " 

"  You've  hit  my  case  exactly, "  said  Ilewson,  and 
the  two  men  laughed. 


XV. 

AFTER  his  marriage,  which  took  place  without  need 
less  delay,  Hewson  returned  with  his  wife  to  spend 
their  honey-moon  at  St.  Johnswort.  The  honey 
moon  prolonged  itself  during  an  entire  year,  and  in 
this  time  they  contrived  so  far  to  live  down  its  repu 
tation  of  being  a  haunted  house  that  they  were  able 
to  conduct  their  menage  on  the  ordinary  terms.  They 
themselves  never  wished  to  lose  the  sense  of  some 
thing  supernatural  in  the  place,  and  were  never  quite 
able  to  accept  the  actual  conditions  as  final.  That  is 
to  say,  Rosalie  was  not,  for  she  had  taken  Hewson's 
apparition  under  her  peculiar  care,  and  defended  it 
against  even  his  question.  She  had  a  feeling  (it  was 
scarcely  a  conviction)  that  if  he  believed  more 
strenuously  in  the  validity  of  his  apparition  as  an  au 
thorized  messenger  from  the  unseen  world  it  would 
yet  come  again  and  declare  its  errand.  She  could 
not  accept  the  theory  that  if  such  a  thing  actually 


104-  HIS  APPARITION. 

happened  it  could  happen  for  nothing  at  all,  or  that 
the  reason  of  its  occurrence  could  be  indefinitely  post 
poned.  She  was  impatient  of  that,  as  often  as  he 
urged  the  possibility,  and  she  wished  him  to  use  a 
seriousness  of  mind  in  speaking  of  his  apparition 
which  should  form  some  sort  of  atonement  to  it  for 
his  past  levity,  though  since  she  had  taken  his  ap 
parition  into  her  keeping  he  had  scarcely  hazarded 
any  suggestion  concerning  it;  in  fact  it  had  become 
so  much  her  apparition  that  he  had  a  fantastic  reluc 
tance  from  meddling  with  it. 

"  You  are  always  requiring  a  great  occasion  for  it,  " 
he  said,  at  last.  "What  greater  event  could  it  have 
foreshadowed  or  foreshown,  than  that  which  actually 
came  to  pass  ? " 

"  I  don't  understand  you,  Arthur,  "  she  said,  letting 
her  hand  creep  into  his,  where  it  trembled  provision 
ally  as  they  sat  together  in  the  twilight. 

"  Why,  that  was  the  day  I  first  saw  you.  " 

"  Now,  you  are  laughing ! "  she  said,  pulling  her 
hand  away. 

"  Indeed,  I'm  not !  I  couldn't  imagine  anything 
more  important  than  the  union  of  our  lives.  And  if 
that  was  what  the  apparition  meant  to  portend  it 
could  not  have  intimated  it  by  a  more  noble  and  im- 


HIS    APPARITION.  105 

pressive  behavior.  Simply  to  be  there,  and  then  to 
be  gone,  and  leave  the  rest  to  us !  It  was  majestic, 
it  was — delicate ! " 

"  Yes,  it  was.  But  it  was  too  much,  for  it  was  out 
of  proportion.  A  mere  earthly  love-affair —  " 

"  Is  it  merely  for  earth  ? " 

"Oh,  husband,  I  hope  you  don't  think  so!  I 
wanted  you  to  say  you  didn't.  And  if  you  don't  think 
so,  yes,  I'll  believe  it  came  for  that !  " 

"  You  may  be  sure  I  don't  think  so." 

"  Then  I  know  it  will  come  again.  " 


THE   ANGEL    OF  THE   LOKD. 


THE   ANGEL    OF  THE   LOKD. 


I. 

"  ALL  that  sort  of  personification,  "  said  Wanhope, 
"  is  far  less  remarkable  than  the  depersonification 
which  has  now  taken  place  so  thoroughly  that  we  no 
longer  think  in  the  old  terms  at  all.  It  was  natural 
that  the  primitive  peoples  should  figure  the  passions, 
conditions,  virtues,  vices,  forces,  qualities,  in  some 
sort  of  corporal  shape,  with  each  a  propensity  or  im 
pulse  of  its  own,  but  it  does  not,  seem  to  me  so  natural 
that  the  derivative  peoples  should  cease  to  do  so.  It 
is  rational  that  they  should  do  so,  and  I  don't  know 
that  any  stronger  proof  of  our  intellectual  advance 
coujd  be  alleged  than  the  fact  that  the  old  personifica 
tions  survive  in  the  parlance  while  they  are  quite 
extinct  in  the  consciousness.  We  still  talk  of  death 
at  times  as  if  it  were  an  embodied  force  of  some  kind, 
and  of  love  in  the  same  way ;  but  I  don't  believe  that 


110        THE  ANGEL  OF  THE  LORD. 

any  man  of  the  commonest  common -school  education 
thinks  of  them  so.  If  you  try  to  do  it  yourself,  you 
are  rather  ashamed  of  the  puerility,  and  when  a  pain 
ter  or  a  sculptor  puts  them  in  an  objective  shape,  you 
follow  him  with  impatience,  almost  with  contempt. " 

"  How  about  the  poets  ? "  asked  Minver,  less  with 
the  notion,  perhaps,  of  refuting  the  psychologist  than 
of  bringing  the  literary  member  of  our  little  group 
under  the  disgrace  that  had  fallen  upon  him  as  an 
artist. 

"  The  poets,  "  said  I,  "  are  as  extinct  as  the  per 
sonifications.  " 

"  That's  very  handsome  of  you,  Acton, "  said  the 
artist.  "  But  go  on,  Wanhope.  " 

"  Yes,  get  down  to  business, "  said  Eulledge.  Be 
ing  of  no  employ  whatever,  and  spending  his  whole 
life  at  the  club  in  an  extraordinary  idleness,  Rulledge 
was  always  using  the  most  strenuous  expressions,  and 
requiring  everybody  to  be  practical.  He  leaned  di 
rectly  forward  with  the  difficulty  that  a  man  of  his 
girth  has  in  such  a  movement,  and  vigorously  broke 
off  the  ash  of  his  cigar  against  the  edge  of  his  saucer. 
We  had  been  dining  together,  and  had  been  served 
with  coffee  in  the  Turkish  room,  as  it  was  called  from 
its  cushions  and  hangings  of  Indian  and  Egyptian 


THE   ANGEL    OF  THE    LORD.  Ill 

stuffs.  "  What  is  the  instance  you've  got  up  your 
sleeve  ? "  He  smoked  with  great  energy,  and  cast  his 
eyes  alertly  about  as  if  to  make  sure  that  there  was 
no  chance  of  Wanhope's  physically  escaping  him, 
from  the  corner  of  the  divan,  where  he  sat  pretty  well 
hemmed  in  by  the  rest  of  us,  spreading  in  an  irregu 
lar  circle  before  him. 

"  You  unscientific  people  are  always  wanting  an 
instance,  as  if  an  instance  were  convincing.  An  in 
stance  is  only  suggestive;  a  thousand  instances,  if 
you  please,  are  convincing, "  said  the  psychologist. 
"  But  I  don't  know  that  I  wish  to  be  convincing.  I 
would  rather  be  enquiring.  That  is  much  more  in 
teresting,  and,  perhaps,  profitable.  " 

"  All  the  same, "  Minver  persisted,  apparently  in 
behalf  of  Rulledge,  but  with  an  after-grudge  of  his 
own,  "  you'll  allow  that  you  were  thinking  of  some 
thing  in  particular  when  you  began  with  that 
generalization  about  the  lost  art  of  personifying?  " 

"  Oh,  that  is  vejy  curious,  "  said  the  psychologist. 
"  We  talk  of  generalizing,  but  is  there  any  such  thing  ? 
Are  n't  we  always  striving  from  one  concrete  to  an 
other,  and  isn't  what  we  call  generalizing  merely  a 
process  of  finding  our  way  ? " 

"  I  see  what  you  mean,  "  said  the  artist,  expressing 


112         THE  ANGEL  OF  THE  LORD. 

in  that  familiar  formula  the  state  of  the  man  who 
hopes  to  know  what  the  other  man  means. 

"That's  what  I  say,"  Rulledge  put  in.  "You've 
got  something  up  your  sleeve.  What  is  it  ?  " 

Wanhope  struck  the  little  bell  on  the  table  before 
him,  but,  without  waiting  for  a  response,  he  inter 
cepted  a  waiter  who  was  passing  with  a  coffee-pot, 
and  asked,  "  Oh,  couldn't  you  give  me  some  of  that  ?  " 

The  man  filled  his  cup  for  him,  and  after  Wanhope 
put  in  the  sugar  and  lifted  it  to  his  lips,  Rulledge 
said,  with  his  impetuous  business  air,  "  It's  easy  to 
see  what  Wanhope  does  his  high  thinking  on. " 

"  Yes, "  the  psychologist  admitted,  "  coffee  is  an 
inspiration.  But  you  can  overdo  an  inspiration.  It 
would  be  interesting  to  know  whether  there  hasn't 
been  a  change  in  the  quality  of  thought  since  the  use 
of  such  stimulants  came  in — whether  it  hasn't  been 
subtilized — 

"  Was  that  what  you  were  going  to  say  ? "  demand 
ed  Rulledge,  relentlessly.  "  Come,  we've  got  no  time 
to  throw  away  !  " 

Everybody  laughed. 

"  You  haven't,  anyway, "  said  I. 

"  Well,  none  of  his  own,  "  Minver  admitted  for 
the  idler. 


THE    ANGEL,    OF    THE    LORD.  113 

"  I  suppose  you  mean  I  have  thrown  it  all  away. 
Well,  I  don't  want  to  throw  away  other  peoples'. 
Go  on,  Wanhope.  " 


II. 

THE  psychologist  set  his  cup  down  and  resumed 
his  cigar,  which  lie  had  to  pull  at  pretty  strongly  be 
fore  it  revived.  "  I  should  not  be  surprised, "  he 
began,  "  if  a  good  deal  of  the  fear  of  death  had  arisen, 
and  perpetuated  itself  in  the  race,  from  the  early  per 
sonification  of  dissolution  as  an  enemy  of  a  certain 
dreadful  aspect,  armed  and  threatening.  That  con 
ception  wouldn't  have  been  found  in  men's  minds  at 
first ;  it  would  have  been  the  result  of  later  crude 
meditation  upon  the  fact.  But  it  would  have  re 
mained  through  all  the  imaginative  ages,  and  the 
notion  might  have  been  intensified  in  the  more  del 
icate  temperaments  as  time  went  on,  and  by  the  play 
of  heredity  it  might  come  down  to  our  own  day  in 
certain  instances  with  a  force  scarcely  impaired  by 
the  lapse  of  incalculable  time. " 

"  You  said  just  now,  "  said  Rulledge,  in  rueful 
reproach,  "  that  personification  had  gone  out.  " 


THE  ANGEL    OF  THE    LORD.  115 

"Yes,  it  has.  I  did  say  that,  and  yet  I  suppose 
that  though  such  a  notion  of  death,  say,  no  longer 
survives  in  the  consciousness,  it  does  survive  in  the 
unconsciousness,  and  that  any  vivid  accident  or  illu 
sory  suggestion  would  have  force  to  bring  it  to  the 
surface. " 

"  I  wish  I  knew  what  you  were  driving  at, "  said 
Kulledge. 

"  You  remember  Ormond,  don't  you  ? "  asked  Wan- 
hope,  turning  suddenly  to  me. 

"  Perfectly,  "  I  said.      "  I— he  isn't  living,  is  he  ?  " 

"  No ;  he  died  two  years  ago.  " 

"  I  thought  so,  "  I  said,  with  the  relief  that  one 
feels  in  not  having  put  a  fellow-creature  out  of  life, 
even  conditionally. 

"  You  knew  Mrs.  Ormond,  too,  I  believe,  "  the 
psychologist  pursued. 

I  owned   that  I  used  to  go  to  the  Ormonds'  house. 

"  Then  you  know  what  a  type  she  was,  I  suppose,  " 
he  turned  to  the  others,  "  and  as  they're  both  dead 
it's  no  contravention  of  the  club  etiquette  against 
talking  of  women,  to  speak  of  her.  I  can't  very  well 
give  the  instance — the  sign — that  Rulledge  is  seeking 
without  speaking  of  her,  unless  I  use  a  great  deal  of 
circumlocution.  "  We  all  urged  him  to  go  on,  and  he 


116  THE    ANGEL  OF  THE    LORD. 

went  on.  "  I  had  the  facts  I'm  going  to  give,  from 
Mrs:  Ormond.  You  know  that  the  Ormonds  left  New 
York  a  couple  of  years  ago  ? " 

He  happened  to  look  at  Minver  as  he  spoke,  and 
Minver  answered :  "  No ;  I  must  confess  that  I  didn't 
even  know  they  had  left  the  planet.  " 

Wanhope  ignored  his  irrelevant  ignorance.  "  They 
went  to  live  provisionally  at  a  place  up  the  Housatonic 
road,  somewhere — perhaps  Canaan ;  but  it  doesn't 
matter.  Ormond  had  been  suffering  some  time  with 
an  obscure  affection  of  the  heart — r' 

"  Oh,  come  now ! "  said  Rulledge.  "  You're  not  go 
ing  to  spring  anything  so  pat  as  heart-disease  on  us  ? " 

"  Acton  is  all  ears, "  said  Minver,  nodding  toward 
me.  "  He  hears  the  weird  note  afar.  " 

The  psychologist  smiled.  "  I'm  afraid  you're  not 
interested.  I'm  not  much  interested  myself  in  these 
unrelated  instances.  " 

"  Oh,  no  !  "  "  Don't !  "  "  Do  go  on  ! "  the  differ 
ent  entreaties  came,  and  after  a  little  time  taken  to 
recover  his  lost  equanimity,  Wanhope  went  on:  "I 
don't  know  whether  you  knew  that  Ormond  had  rather 
a  peculiar  dread  of  death.  "  We  none  of  us  could 
affirm  that  we  did,  and  again  Wanhope  resumed:  "  I 
shouldn't  say  that  he  was  a  coward  above  other  men 


THE    ANGEL    OF    THE  LORD.  117 

I  believe  lie  was  rather  below  the  average  in  coward 
ice.  But  the  thought  of  death  weighed  upon  him. 
You  find  this  much  more  commonly  among  the  Rus 
sians,  if  we  are  to  believe  their  novelists,  than  among 
Americans.  He  might  have  been  a  character  out  of 
one  of  Tourguenief's  books,  the  idea  of  death  was  so 
constantly  present  with  him.  He  once  told  me  that 
the  fear  of  it  was  a  part  of  his  earliest  consciousness, 
before  the  time  when  he  could  have  had  any  intellect 
ual  conception  of  it.  It  seemed  to  be  something  like 
the  projection  of  an  alien  horror  into  his  life — a 
prenatal  influence — " 

"  Jove  !  "  Rulledge  broke  in.  "  I  don't  see  how 
the  women  stand  it.  To  look  forward  nearly  a  whole 
year  to  death  as  the  possible  end  of  all  they're  hoping 
for  and  suffering  for !  Talk  of  men's  courage  after 
that !  I  wonder  were're  not  all  marked. ' 

"  I  never  heard  of  anything  of  the  kind  in  Ormond's 
history, "  said  Wanhope,  tolerant  of  the  incursion. 

Minver  took  his  cigar  out  to  ask,  the  more  impres 
sively,  perhaps,  "  What  do  you  fellows  make  of  the 
terror  that  a  two  months'  babe  starts  in  its  sleep  with 
before  it  can  have  any  notion  of  what  fear  is  on  its 
own  hook  2 " 

"  We   don't  make   anything  of    it,  "  the  psychol- 


118         THE  ANGEL  OF  THE  LORD. 

ogist    answered.       "  Perhaps    the    pathologists    do." 

"  Oh,  it's  easy  enough  to  say  wind,  "  Rulledge  in 
dignantly  protested. 

"  Too  easy,  I  agree  with  you,  "  Wanhope  consented. 
"  We  cannot  tell  what  influences  reach  us  from  our 
environment,  or  what  our  environment  really  is,  or 
how  much  or  little  we  mean  by  the  word.  The  sense 
of  danger  seems  to  be  inborn,  and  possibly  it  is  a 
survival  of  our  race  life  when  it  was  wholly  animal 
and  took  care  of  itself  through  what  we  used  to  call 
the  instincts.  But,  as  I  was  saying,  it  was  not  danger 
that  Ormond  seemed  to  be  afraid  of,  if  it  came  short 
of  death.  He  was  almost  abnormally  indifferent  to 
pain.  I  knew  of  his  undergoing  an  operation  that 
most  people  would  take  ether  for,  and  not  winc 
ing,  because  it  was  not  supposed  to  involve  a  fatal 
result. 

"  Perhaps  he  carried  his  own  anodyne  with  him,  " 
said  Minver,  "  like  the  Chinese. " 

"  You  mean  a  sort  of  self -anaesthesia  ? "  Wanhope 
asked.  "  That  is  very  interesting.  How  far  such  a 
principle,  if  there  is  one,  can  be  carried  in  practice. 
The  hypnotists — " 

"  I'm  afraid  I  didn't  mean  anything  so  serious  or 
scientific,  "  said  the  painter. 


THE    ANGEL    OF  THE    LORD.  119 

"  Then  don't  switch  "Wanhope  off  on  a  side  track,  " 
Rulledge  implored.  "  You  know  how  hard  it  is  to 
keep  him  on  the  main  line.  He's  got  a  mind  that 
splays  all  over  the  place  if  you  give  him  the  least 
chance.  Now,  Wanhope,  come  down  to  business.  " 

Wanhope  laughed  amiably.  "  Why,  there's  so 
very  little  of  the  business.  I'm  not  sure  that  it  wasn't 
Mrs.  Ormond's  attitude  toward  the  fact  that  interested 
me  most.  It  was  nothing  short  of  devout.  She  was 
a  convert.  She  believed  he  really  saw — I  suppose, " 
he  turned  to  me,  u  there's  no  harm  in  our  recognizing 
now  that  they  didn't  always  get  on  smoothly  together  ? " 

u  Did  they  ever  ? "  I  asked. 

"  Oh,  yes — oh,  yes,  "  said  the  psychologist,  kindly. 
"  They  were  very  fond  of  each  other,  and  often  very 
peaceful.  " 

"  I  never  happened  to  be  by,  "  I  said. 

"  Used  to  fight  like  cats  and  dogs, "  said  Minver. 
"  And  they  didn't  seem  to  mind  people.  It  was  very 
swell,  in  a  way,  their  indifference,  and  it  did  help  to 
take  away  a  fellow's  embarrassment.  " 

"  That  seemed  to  come  mostly  to  an  end  that  sum 
mer,  "  said  Wanhope,  "  if  you  could  believe  Mrs. 
Ormand.  " 

"  You  probably  couldn't,  "  the  painter  put  in. 


120         THE  ANGEL  OF  THE  LORD. 

"  At  any  rate  she  seemed  to  worship  his  memory.  " 

"  Oh,  yes ;  she  hadn't  him  there  to  claw.  " 

"  Well,  she  was  quite  frank  about  it  with  me, "  the 
psychologist  pursued.  "  She  admitted  that  they  had 
always  quarreled  a  good  deal.  She  seemed  to  think 
it  was  a  token  of  their  perfect  unity.  It  was  as  if 
they  were  each  quarreling  with  themselves,  she  said. 
I'm  not  sure  that  there  wasn't  something  in  the  notion. 
There  is  no  doubt  but  that  they  were  tremendously  in 
love  with  each  other,  and  there  is  something  curious 
in  the  bickerings  of  married  people  if  they  are  in  love. 
It's  one  way  of  having  no  concealments ;  it's  perfect 
confidence  of  a  kind — " 

"  Or  unkind,  "  Minver  suggested. 

"  What  has  all  that  got  to  do  with  it  ? "  Rulledge 
demanded. 

"  Nothing  directly, "  Wanhope  confessed,  "  and 
I'm  not  sure  that  it  has  much  to  do  indirectly.  Still, 
it  has  a  certain  atmospheric  relation.  It  is  very  re 
markable  how  thoughts  connect  themselves  with  one 
another.  It's  a  sort  of  wireless  telegraphy.  They 
do  not  touch  at  all ;  there  is  apparently  no  manner  of 
tie  between  them,  but  they  communicate —  ' 

"  Oh,  Lord  !  "  Rulledge  fumed. 

Wanhope   looked  at  him  with  a  smiling   concern, 


THE    ANGEL   OF    THE    LORD.  121 

such  as  a  physician  might  feel  in  the  symptoms  of  a 
peculiar  case.  "  I  wonder,  "  he  said  absently,  "  how 
much  of  our  impatience  with  a  fact  delayed  is  a  sur 
vival  of  the  childhood  of  the  race,  and  how  far  it  is 
the  effect  of  conditions  in  which  possession  is  the 
ideal?" 

Rulledge  pushed  back  his  chair,  and  walked  away 
in  dudgeon.  "  I'm  a  busy  man  myself.  When 
you've  got  anything  to  say  you  can  send  for  me. " 

Minver  ran  after  him,  as  no  doubt  he  meant  some 
one  should.  "  Oh,  come  back  !  He's  just  going  to 
begin ; "  and  when  Rulledge,  after  some  pouting,  had 
been  pushed  down  into  his  chair  again,  Wanhope 
went  on,  with  a  glance  of  scientific  pleasure  at  him. 


III. 

"  THE  house  they  had  taken  was  rather  a  lonely 
place,  out  of  sight  of  neighbors,  which  they  had  got 
cheap  because  it  was  so  isolated  and  inconvenient,  I 
fancy.  Of  course  Mrs.  Ormond,  with  her  exaggera 
tion,  represented  it  as  a  sort  of  solitude  which  nobody 
but  tramps  of  the  most  dangerous  description  ever 
visited.  As  she  said,  she  never  went  to  sleep  without 
expecting  to  wake  up  murdered  in  her  bed. " 

"  Like  her, "  said  Minver,  with  a  glance  at  me  full 
of  relish  for  the  touch  of  character  which  I  would 
feel  with  him. 

"  She  said, "  Wanhope  went  on,  "  that  she  was 
anxious  from  the  first  for  the  effect  upon  Ormond. 
In  the  stress  of  any  danger,  she  gave  me  to  under 
stand,  he  always  behaved  very  well,  but  out  of  its 
immediate  presence  he  was  full  of  all  sorts  of  gloomy 
apprehensions,  unless  the  surroundings  were  cheerful. 
She  could  not  imagine  how  he  came  to  take  the  place, 
but  when  she  told  him  so —  " 


THE    ANGEL    OF   THE    LORD.  123 

<c  I've  no  doubt  she  told  him  so  pretty  promptly,  " 
the  painter  grinned. 

" — he  explained  that  he  h&d  seen  it  on  a  brilliant 
day  in  spring,  when  all  the  trees  were  in  bloom,  and 
the  bees  humming  in  the  blossoms,  and  the  orioles 
singing,  and  the  outlook  from  the  lawn  down  over 
the  river  valley  was  at  its  best.  He  had  fallen  in  love 
with  the  place,  that  was  the  truth,  and  he  was  so 
wildly  in  love  with  it  all  through  that  he  could  not 
feel  the  defect  she  did  in  it.  He  used  to  go  gaily 
about  the  wide,  harking  old  house  at  night,  shutting 
it  up,  and  singing  or  whistling  while  she  sat  quaking 
at  the  notion  of  their  loneliness  and  their  absolute 
helplessness — an  invalid  and  a  little  woman — in  case 
anything  happened.  She  wanted  him  to  get  the  man 
who  did  the  odd  jobs  about  the  house,  to  sleep  there, 
but  he  laughed  at  her,  and  they  kept  on  with  their 
usual  town  equipment  of  two  serving-women.  She 
could  not  account  for  his  spirits,  which  were  usually 
so  low  when  they  were  alone — " 

"  And  not  fighting, "  Minver  suggested  to  me. 

"  — and  when  she  asked  him  what  the  matter  was 
he  could  not  account  for  them,  either.  But  he  said, 
one  day,  that  the  fear  of  death  seemed  to  be  lifted 
from  his  soul,  and  that  made  her  shudder.  " 


124         THE  ANGEL  OF  THE  LORD 

Rulledge  fetched  a  long  sigh,  and  Minver  inter 
preted,  "  Beginning  to  feel  that  it's  something  like 
now.  " 

"  He  said  that  for  the  first  time  within  his  memory 
he  was.  rid  of  that  nether  consciousness  of  mortality 
which  had  haunted  his  whole  life,  and  poisoned,  more 
or  less,  all  his  pleasure  in.  living.  He  had  got  a  re 
prieve,  or  a  respite,  and  he  felt  like  a  boy — another 
kind  of  boy  from  what  he  had  ever  been.  He  was 
full  of  all  sorts  o£  brilliant  hopes  and  plans.  He  had 
visions  of  success  in  business  beyond  anything  he 
had  known,  and  talked  of  buying  the  place  he  had 
taken,  and  getting  a  summer  colony  of  friends  about 
them.  He  meant  to  cut  the  property  up,  and  make 
the  right  kind  of  people  inducements.  His  world 
seemed  to  have  been  emptied  of  all  trouble  as  well  as 
all  mortal  danger. " 

"  Haven't  you  psychologists  some  message  about 
a  condition  like  that  ? "  I  asked. 

"  Perhaps  it's  only  the  pathologists  again,  "  said 
Minver. 

"  The  alienists,  rather  more  specifically, "  said  Wan- 
hope.  "  They  recognize  it  as  one  of  the  beginnings 
of  insanity — -folie  des  grandeurs  as  the  French  call 
the  stage. " 


THE  ANGEL  OF  THE  LOUD.         125 

"Is  it  necessarily  that?"  Rulledge  demanded,  with 
a  resentment  which  we  felt  so  droll  in  him  that  we 
laughed. 

"  I  don't  know  that  it  is,  "  said  Wanhope.  "  I 
don't  know  why  we  shouldn't  sometimes,  in  the  ab 
sence  of  proofs  to  the  contrary,  give  such  a  fact  the 
chance  to  evince  a  spiritual  import.  Of  course  it  had 
no  other  import  to  poor  Mrs.  Ormond,  and  of  course 
I  didn't  dream  of  suggesting  a  scientific  significance.  " 

"  I  should  think  not !  "  Rulledge  puffed. 

Wanhope  went  on :  "I  don't  think  I  should  have 
dared  to  do  so  to  a  woman  in  her  exaltation  concern 
ing  it.  I  could  see  that  however  his  state  had  affected 
her  with  dread  or  discomfort  in  the  first  place,  it  had 
since  come  to  be  her  supreme  hope  and  consolation. 
In  view  of  what  afterward  happened,  she  regarded  it 
as  the  effect  of  a  mystical  intimation  from  another 
world  that  was  sacred,  and  could  not  be  considered 
like  an  ordinary  fact  without  sacrilege.  There  was 
something  very  pathetic  in  her  absolute  conviction 
that  Ormond's  happiness  was  an  emanation  from  the 
source  of  all  happiness,  such  as  sometimes,  where  the 
consciousness  persists,  comes  to  a  death-bed.  That 
the  dying  are  not  afraid  of  dying  is  a  fact  of  such 
common,  such  almost  invariable  observation — " 


126         THE  ANGEL  OF  THE  LORD. 

"  You  mean, "  I  interposed,  "  when  the  vital  forces 
are  beaten  so  low  that  the  natural  dread  of  ceasing  to 
be,  has  no  play  ?  It  has  less  play,  I've  noticed,  in 
age  than  in  youth,  but  for  the  same  reason  that  it  has 
when  people  are  weakened  by  sickness.  " 

"  Ah,  "  said  Wanhope,  "  that  comparative  indiffer 
ence  to  death  in  the  old,  to  whom  it  is  so  much  nearer 
than  it  is  to  the  young,  is  very  suggestive.  There 
may  be  something  in  what  you  say;  they  may  not 
care  so  much  because  they  have  no  longer  the  strength 
— the  muscular  strength — for  caring.  They  are  too 
tired  to  care  as  they  used.  There  is  a  whole  region 
of  most  important  inquiry  in  that  direction —  " 

"  Did  you  mean  to  have  him  take  that  direction  ?  " 
Rulledge  asked,  sulkily. 

"  He  can  take  any  direction  for  me,  "  I  said.  "  He 
is  always  delightful.  " 

"  Ah,  thank  you  !  "  said  Wanhope. 

"  But  I  confess,  "  I  went  on,  "  that  I  was  wonder 
ing  whether  the  fact  that  the  dying  are  indifferent  to 
death  could  be  established  in  the  case  of  those  who 
die  in  the  flush  of  health  and  strength,  like,  for  in 
stance,  people  who  are  put  to  death.  " 

Wanhope  smiled.  "  I  think  it  can — measurably. 
Most  murderers  make  a  good  end,  as  the  saying  used 


THE    ANGEL    OF    THE   LORD.  127 

to  be,  when  they  end  on  the  scaffold,  though  they  are 
not  supported  by  religious  fervor  of  any  kind,  or  the 
exaltation  of  a  high  ideal.  They  go  meekly  and  even 
cheerfully  to  their  death,  without  rebellion  or  even 
objection.  It  is  most  exceptional  that  they  make  a 
fight  for  their  lives,  as  that  woman  did  a  few  years 
ago  at  Dannemora,  and  disgusted  all  refined  people 
with  capital  punishment.  " 

"  I  wish  they  would  make  a  fight  always, "  said 
Rulledge,  with  unexpected  feeling.  "It  would  do 
more  than  anything  to  put  an  end  to  that  barbarity.  " 

"  It  would  be  very  interesting,  as  Wanhope  says, " 
Minver  remarked.  "  But  aren't  we  getting  rather  far 
away  ?  From  the  Ormonds,  I  mean.  " 

"  We  are,  rather,  "  said  Wanhope.  "  Though  I 
agree  that  it  would  be  interesting.  I  should  rather 
like  to  have  it  tried.  You  know  Frederick  Douglass 
acted  upon  some  such  principle  when  his  master  at 
tempted  to  whip  him.  He  fought,  and  he  had  a 
theory  that  if  the  slave  had  always  fought  there 
would  soon  have  been  an  end  of  whipping,  and  so  an 
end  of  slavery.  But  probably  it  will  be  a  good  while 
before  criminals  are — 

"  Educated  up  to  the  idea,  "  Minver  proposed. 

"  Yes,  "  Wanhope    absently    acquiesced.     "  There 


128         THE  ANGEL  OF  THE  LORD. 

seems  to  be  a  resignation  intimated  to  the  parting 
soul,  whether  in  sickness  or  in  health,  by  the  mere 
proximity  of  death.  In  Ormond's  case  there  seems 
to  have  been  something  more  positive.  His  wife 
says  that  in  the  beginning  of  those  days  he  used  to 
come  to  her  and  wonder  what  could  be  the  matter 
with  him.  He  had  a  joy  he  could  not  account  for  by 
anything  in  their  lives,  and  it  made  her  tremble. " 

"  Probably  it  didn't.  I  don't  think  there  was  any 
thing  that  could  make  Mrs.  Ormond  tremble,  unless 
it  was  the  chance  that  Ormond  would  get  the  last 
word, "  said  Minver. 

No  one  minded  him,  and  Wanhope  continued: 
"  Of  course  she  thought  he  must  be  going  to  have  a 
fit  of  sickness,  as  the  people  say  in  the  country,  or 
used  to  say.  Those  expressions  often  survive  in  the 
common  parlance  long  after  the  peculiar  mental  and 
moral  conditions  in  which  they  originated  have  passed 
away.  They  must  once  have  been  more  accurate  than 
they  are  now.  When  one  said  '  fit  of  sickness '  one 
must  have  meant  something  specific ;  it  would  be  in 
teresting  to  know  what.  Women  use  those  expressions 
longer  than  men ;  they  seem  to  be  inveterate  in  their 
nerves;  and  women  apparently  do  their  thinking  in 
their  nerves  rather  than  their  brains.  " 


IV. 

WANHOPE  had  that  distant  look  in  his  eyes  which 
warned  his  familiars  of  a  possible  excursion,  and  I 
said,  in  the  hope  of  keeping  him  from  it,  "Then 
isn't  there  a  turn  of  phrase  somewhat  analogous  to 
that  in  a  personification '?  " 

"  Ah,  yes — a  personification,  "  he  repeated  with  a 
freshness  of  interest,  which  he  presently  accounted 
for.  "  The  place  they  had  taken  was  very  completely 
furnished.  They  got  it  fully  equipped,  even  to  linen 
and  silver;  but  what  was  more  important  to  poor  Or- 
mond  was  the  library,  very  rich  in  the  English  classics, 
which  appeared  to  go  with  the  house.  The  owner 
was  a  girl  who  married  and  lived  abroad,  and  these 
were  her  father's  books.  Mrs.  Ormond  said  that  her 
husband  had  the  greatest  pleasure  in  them:  their 
print,  which  was  good  and  black,  and  their  paper, 
which  was  thin  and  yellowish,  and  their  binding, 
which  was  tree  calf  in  the  poets,  he  specially  liked. 


130         THE  ANGEL  OF  THE  LORD. 

They  were  English  editions  as  well  as  English  classics, 
and  she  said  he  caressed  the  books,  as  he  read  them, 
with  that  touch  which  the  book-lover  has }  he  put  his 
face  into  them,  and  inhaled  their  odor  as  if  it  were 
the  bouquet  of  wine ;  he  wanted  her  to  like  it,  too. " 

"  Then  she  hated  it,  "  Minver  said,  unrelentingly. 

"  Perhaps  not,  if  there  was  nobody  else  there, "  I 
urged. 

For  once  Wanhope  was  not  to  be  tempted  off  on 
another  scent.  "  There  was  a  good  deal  of  old-fash 
ioned  fiction  of  the  suspiratory  and  exclamatory  sort, 
like  Mackenzie's,  and  Sterne's  and  his  followers,  full 
of  feeling,  as  people  understood  feeling  a  hundred 
years  ago.-  But  what  Ormond  rejoiced  in  most  were 
the  poets,  good  and  bad,  like  Gray  and  Collins  and 
Young,  and  their  contemporaries,  who  personified 
nearly  everything  from  Contemplation  to  Indigestion, 
through  the  whole  range  of  the  Vices,  Virtues,  Pas 
sions,  Propensities,  Attributes,  and  Qualities,  and  gave 
them  each  a  dignified  capital  letter  to  wear.  She 
said  he  used  to  come  roaring  to  her  with  the  passages 
in  which  these  personifications  flourished,  and  read 
them  off  with  mock  admiration,  and  then  shriek  and 
sputter  with  laughter.  You  know  the  way  he  had 
when  a  thing  pleased  him,  especially  a  thing  that  had 


THE    ANGEL    OF    THE    LOUD.  131 

some  relish  of  the  quaint  or  rococo.  As  nearly  as 
she  would  admit,  in  view  of  his  loss,  he  bored  her 
with  these  things.  He  was  always  hunting  down 
some  new  personification,  and  when  he  had  got  it, 
adding  it  to  the  list  he  kept.  She  said  he  had  thous 
ands  of  them,  but  I  suppose  he  had  not  so  many. 
He  had  enough,  though,  to  keep  him  amused,  and 
she  said  he  talked  of  writing  something  for  the 
magazines  about  them,  but  probably  he  never  would 
have  done  it.  He  never  wrote  anything,  did  he  ? " 
Wanhope  asked  of  me. 

"  Oh,  no.  He  was  far  too  literary  for  that,  "  I 
answered.  "  He  had  a  reputation  to  lose.  " 

"Pretty  good,"  said  Minver,  "even  if  Ormond  is 
dead.  " 

Wanhope  ignored  us  both.  "  After  awhile,  his  wife 
said,  she  began  to  notice  a  certain  change  in  his  at 
titude  toward  the  personifications.  She  noticed  this, 
always  expecting  that  fit  of  sickness  for  him ;  but  she 
was  not  so  much  troubled  by  his  returning  seriousness. 
Oh,  I  ought  to  tell  you  that  when  she  first  began  to 
be  anxious  for  him  she  privately  wrote  home  to  their 
family  doctor,  telling  him  how  strangely  happy  Or 
mond  was,  and  asking  him  if  he  could  advise  anything. 
He  wrote  back  that  if  Ormond  was  so  very  happy 

9 


132          THE  ANGEL  OF  THE  LORD. 

they  had  better  not  do  anything  to  cure  him ;    that 
the  disease  was  not  infectious,  and  was  seldom  fatal.  " 

"  "What  an  ass  !  "  said  Rulledge. 

"  Yes,  I  think  he  was,  in  this  instance.  But  prob 
ably  he  had  been  consulted  a  good  deal  by  Mrs. 
Ormond,  "  said  Wanhope.  "  The  change  that  began 
t0-set  her  mind  at  rest  about  Ormond  was  his  taking 
the  personifications  more  seriously.  Why,  he  began 
to  ask,  but  always  with  a  certain  measure  of  joke  in 
it,  why  shouldn't  there  be  something  in  the  personifi 
cations  ?  Why  shouldn't  Morn  and  Eve  come  corpore 
ally  walking  up  their  lawn,  with  little  or  no  clothes 
on,  or  Despair  be  sitting  in  their  woods  with  her  hair 
over  her  face,  or  Famine  coming  gauntly  up  to  their 
back  door  for  a  hand-out  ?  W"hy  shouldn't  they  any 
day  see  pop-eyed  Rapture  passing  on  the  trolley,  or 
Meditation  letting  the  car  she  intended  to  take  go  by 
without  stepping  lively  enough  to  get  on  board  ?  He 
pretended  that  we  could  have  the  personifications 
back  again,  if  we  were  not  so  conventional  in  our  con 
ceptions  of  them.  He  wanted  to  know  what  reason 
there  was  for  representing  Life  as  a  very  radiant  and 
bounding  party,  when  Life  usually  neither  shone  nor 
bounded;  and  why  Death  should  be  figured  as  an 
enemy  with  a  dart,  when  it  was  so  often  the  only 


THE    ANGEL    OF  THE    LOUD.  133 

friend  a  man  had  left,  and  had  the  habit  of  binding 
up  wounds  rather  than  inflicting  them.  The  personi 
fications  were  all  right,  he  said,  but  the  poets  and 
painters  did  not  know  how  they  really  looked.  By 
the  way, "  Wanhope  broke  off,  "  did  you  happen  to 
see  Ilauptmann's  l  Hannele  '  when  it  was  here  ? " 

None  of  us  had,  and  we  waited  rather  restively  for 
the  passing  of  the  musing  fit  which  he  fell  into.  After 
a  while  he  resumed  at  a  point  whose  relation  to  the 
matter  in  hand  we  could  trace : 

"  It  was  extremely  interesting  for  all  reasons,  by  its 
absolute  fearlessness  and  freshness  in  regions  where 
there  has  been  nothing  but  timid  convention  for  a 
long  time ;  but  what  I  was  thinking  of  was  the  per 
sonification  of  Death  as  it  appears  there.  The  poor 
little  dying  pauper,  lying  in  her  dream  at  the  alms- 
house,  sees  the  figure  of  Death.  It  is  not  the  skeleton 
with  the  dart,  or  the  phantom  with  the  shrouded  face, 
but  a  tall,  beautiful  young  man, — as  beautiful  as  they 
could  get  into  the  cast,  at  any  rate, — clothed  in  simple 
black,  and  standing  with  his  back  against  the  mantle- 
piece,  with  his  hands  resting  on  the  hilt  of  a  long, 
two-handed  sword.  He  is  so  quiet  that  you  do  not 
see  him  until  some  time  after  the  child  has  seen  him. 
When  she  begins  to  question  him  whether  she  may 


134         THE  ANGEL  OF  THE  LORD. 

not  somehow  get  to  heaven  without  dying,  he  answers 
with  a  sort  of  sorrowful  tenderness,  a  very  sweet  and 
noble  compassion,  but  unsparingly  as  to  his  mission. 
It  is  a  singular  moment  of  pure  poetry  that  makes  the 
heart  ache,  but  does  not  crush  or  terrify  the  spirit.  " 

"  And  what  has  it  got  to  do  with  Ormond  ? "  asked 
Rulledge,  but  with  less  impatience  than  usual. 

"  Why,  nothing,  I'm  afraid,  that  I  can  make  out 
very  clearly.  And  yet  there  is  an  obscure  connection 
with  Ormond,  or  his  vision,  if  it  was  a  vision.  Mrs. 
Ormond  could  not  be  very  definite  about  what  he  saw, 
perhaps  because  even  at  the  last  moment  he  was  not 
definite  himself.  What  she  was  clear  about,  was  the 
fact  that  his  mood,  though  it  became  more  serious, 
by  no  means  became  sadder.  It  became  a  sort  of 
solemn  joy  instead  of  the  light  gaiety  it  had  begun 
by  being.  She  was  no  sort  of  scientific  observer,  and 
yet  the  keenness  of  her  affection  made  her  as  closely 
observant  of  Ormond  as  if  she  had  been  studying  him 
psychologically.  Sometimes  the  light  in  his  room 
would  wake  her  at  night,  and  she  would  go  to  him, 
and  find  him  lying  with  a  book  faced  down  on  his 
breast,  as  if  he  had  been  reading,  and  his  fingers  in 
terlaced  under  his  head,  and  a  kind  of  radiant  peace 
in  his  face.  The  poor  thing  said  that  when  she  would 


THE    ANGEL    OF  THE    LORD.  135 

ask  him  what  the  matter  was,  he  would  say,  '  Nothing ; 
just  happiness, '  and  when  she  would  ask  him  if  he 
did  not  think  he  ought  to  do  something,  he  would 
laugh,  and  say  perhaps  it  would  go  off  of  itself.  But 
it  did  not  go  off ;  the  unnatural  buoyancy  continued 
after  he  became  perfectly  tranquil.  '  I  don't  know, ' 
he  would  say.  '  I  seem  to  have  got  to  the  end  of  my 
troubles.  I  haven't  a  care  in  the  world,  Jenny.  I 
don't  believe  you  could  get  a  rise  out  of  me  if  you 
said  the  nastiest  thing  you  could  think  of.  It  sounds 
like  nonsense,  of  course,  but  it  seems  to  me  that  I 
have  found  out  the  reason  of  things,  though  I  don't 
know  what  it  is.  Maybe  I've  only  found  out  that 
there  is  a  reason  of  things.  That  would  be  enough, 
wouldn't  it  ? '  " 


V. 

At  this  point  Wanhope  hesitated  with  a  kind  of 
diffidence  that  was  rather  charming  in  him.  "  I  don't 
see, "  he  said,  "  just  how  I  can  keep  the  facts  from 
this  on  out  of  the  line  of  facts  which  we  are  not  in 
the  habit  of  respecting  very  much,  or  that  we  relegate 
to  the  company  of  things  that  are  not  facts  at  all.  I 
suppose  that  in  stating  them  I  shall  somehow  make 
myself  responsible  for  them,  but  that  is  just  what  I 
don't  want  to  do.  I  don't  want  to  do  anything  more 
than  give  them  as  they  were  given  to  me.  " 

"  You  won't  be  able  to  give  them  half  as  fully, " 
said  Minver,  "  if  Mrs.  Ormond  gave  them  to  you. " 

"  No, "  Wanhope  said  gravely,  "  and  that's  the  pity 
of  it ;  for  they  ought  to  be  given  as  fully  as  possible.  " 

"Go  ahead,"  Rulledge  commanded,  " and  do  the 
best  you  can. " 

"  I'm  not  sure,  "  the  psychologist  thoughtfully  said, 
"  that  I  am  quite  satisfied  to  call  Ormond's  experiences 


THE    ANGEL    OF    THE    LORD.  137 

hallucinations.  There  ought  to  be  some  other  word 
that  doesn't  accuse  his  sanity  in  that  degree.  For  he 
apparently  didn't  show  any  other  signs  of  an  unsound 
mind.  " 

"  None  that  Mrs.  Ormond  would  call  so,  "  Minver 
suggested. 

"  Well,  in  his  case,  I  don't  think  she  was  such  a 
bad  judge,  "  Wanhope  returned.  "  She  was  a  tolera 
bly  unbalanced  person  herself,  but  she  wasn't  altogether 
disqualified  for  observing  him,  as  I've  said  before. 
They  had  a  pretty  hot  summer,  as  the  summer  is  apt 
to  be  in  the  Housatonic  valley,  but  when  it  got  along 
into  September  the  weather  was  divine,  and  they 
spent  nearly  the  whole  time  out  of  doors,  driving  over 
the  hills.  They  got  an  old  horse  from  a  native,  and 
they  hunted  out  a  rickety  buggy  from  the  carriage- 
house,  and  they  went  wherever  the  road  led.  They 
went  mostly  at  a  walk,  and  that  suited  the  horse  ex 
actly,  as  well  as  Mrs.  Ormond,  who  had  no  faith  in 
Ormond's  driving,  and  wanted  to  go  at  a  pace  that 
would  give  her  a  chance  to  jump  out  safely  if  any 
thing  happened.  They  put  their  hats  in  the  front  of 
the  buggy,  and  went  about  in  their  bare  heads.  The 
country  people  got  used  to  them,  and  were  not  scan 
dalized  by  their  appearance,  though  they  were  both 


138         THE  ANGEL  OF  THE  LORD. 

getting  a  little  gray,  and  must  have  looked  as  if  they 
were  old  enough  to  know  better. 

"  They  were  not  really  old,  as  age  goes  nowadays : 
he  was  not  more  than  forty-two  or-three,  and  she  was 
still  in  the  late  thirties.  In  fact,  they  were 

Nel  mezzo  del  cammin  di  nostra  vita— 
in  that  hour  when  life,  and  the  conceit  of  life,  is 
strongest,  and  when  it  feels  as  if  it  might  go  on  for 
ever.  Women  are  not  very  articulate  about  such 
things,  and  it  was  probably  Ormond  who  put  their 
feeling  into  words,  though  she  recognized  at  once  that 
it  was  her  feeling,  and  shrank  from  it  as  if  it  were 
something  wicked,  that  they  would  be  punished  for ; 
so  that  one  day,  when  he  said  suddenly,  <  Jenny,  I 
don't  feel  as  if  I  could  ever  die, '  she  scolded  him  for 
it.  Poor  women  !  "  said  Wanhope,  musingly,  "  they 
are  not  always  cross  when  they  scold.  It  is  often  the 
expression  of  their  anxieties,  their  forebodings,  their 
sex-timidities.  They  are  always  in  double  the  danger 
that  men  are,  and  their  nerves  double  that  danger 
again.  Who  was  that  famous  salonniere — Mme.  Geoff- 
rin,  was  it? — that  Marmontel  says  always  scolded  her 
friends  when  they  were  in  trouble,  and  came  and 
scolded  him  when  he  was  put  into  the  Bastille  ?  I 
suppose  Mrs.  Ormond  was  never  so  tender  of  Ormond 


THE    ANGEL    OF    THE    LORD.  139 

as  she  was  when  she  took  it  out  of  him  for  suggesting 
what  she  wildly  felt  herself,  and  felt  she  should  pay 
for  feeling. " 

Wanhope  had  the  effect  of  appealing  to  Minver, 
but  the  painter  would  not  relent.  "  I  don't  know. 
I've  seen  her — or  heard  her — in  very  devoted  mo 
ments.  " 

"  At  any  rate,  "  Wanhope  resumed,  "  she  says  she 
scolded  him,  and  it  did  not  do  the  least  good.  She 
could  not  scold  him  out  of  that  feeling,  which  was  all 
mixed  up  in  her  retrospect  with  the  sense  of  the 
weather  and  the  season,  the  leaves  just  beginning  to 
show  the  autumn,  the  wild  asters  coining  to  crowd 
the  goldenrod,  the  crickets  shrill  in  the  grass,  and  the 
birds  silent  in  the  trees,  the  smell  of  the  rowan  in  the 
meadows,  and  the  odor  of  the  old  logs  and  fresh  chips 
in  the  woods.  She  was  not  a  woman  to  notice  such 
things  much,  but  he  talked  of  them  all  and  made  her 
notice  them.  His  nature  took  hold  upon  what  we 
call  nature,  and  clung  fondly  to  the  lowly  and  familiar 
aspects  of  it.  Once  she  said  to  him,  trembling  for 
him,  *  I  should  think  you  would  be  afraid  to  take  such 
a  pleasure  in  those  things, '  and  when  he  asked  her 
why,  she  couldn't  or  wouldn't  tell  him  ;  but  he  under 
stood,  and  he  said :  '  I've  never  realized  before  that  I 


140  THE    ANGEL    OF   THE    LORD. 

was  so  much  a  part  of  them.  Either  I  am  going  to 
have  them  forever,  or  they  are  going  to  have  me. 
We  shall  not  part,  for  we  are  all  members  of  the  same 
body.  If  it  is  the  body  of  death,  we  are  members 
of  that.  If  it  is  the  body  of  life,  we  are  members  of 
that.  Either  I  have  never  lived,  or  else  I  am  never 
going  to  die. '  She  said :  <  Of  course  you  are  never 
going  to  die ;  a  spirit  can't  die. '  But  he  told  her  he 
didn't  mean  that.  He  was  just  as  radiantly  happy 
when  they  would  get  home  from  one  of  their  drives, 
and  sit  down  to  their  supper,  which  they  had  country- 
fashion  instead  of  dinner,  and  then  when  they  would 
turn  into  their  big,  lamplit  parlor,  and  sit  down  for  a 
long  evening  with  his  books.  Sometimes  he  read  to 
her  as  she  sewed,  but  he  read  mostly  to  himself,  and 
he  said  he  hadn't  had  such  a  bath  of  poetry  since  he 
was  a  boy.  Sometimes  in  the  splendid  nights,  which 
were  so  clear  that  you  could  catch  the  silver  glint  of 
the  gossamers  in  the  thin  air,  he  would  go  out  and 
walk  up  and  down  the  long  veranda.  Once,  when  he 
coaxed  her  out  with  him,  he  took  her  under  the  arm 
and  walked  her  up  and  down,  and  he  said :  '  Isn't  it 
like  a  ship  ?  The  earth  is  like  a  ship,  and  we're  sail 
ing,  sailing  !  Oh,  I  wonder  where  ! '  Then  he  stopped 
with  a  sob,  and  she  was  startled,  and  asked  him  what 


THE    ANGEL    OF  THE    LORD.  141 

the  matter  was,  but  he  couldn't  tell  her.  She  was 
more  frightened  than  ever  at  what  seemed  a  break  in 
his  happiness.  She  was  troubled  about  his  reading 
the  Bible  so  much,  especially  the  Old  Testament; 
but  he  told  her  he  had  never  known  before  what 
majestic  literature  it  was.  There  were  some  turns  or 
phrases  in  it  that  peculiarly  took  his  fancy  and  seemed 
to  feed  it  with  inexhaustible  suggestion.  '  The  Angel 
of  the  Lord '  was  one  of  these.  The  idea  of  a  divine 
messenger,  embodied  and  commissioned  to  intimate 
the  creative  will  to  the  creature:  it  was  sublime,  it 
was  ineffable.  He  wondered  that  men  had  ever  come 
to  think  in  any  other  terms  of  the  living  law  that  we 
were  under,  and  that  could  much  less  conceivably 
operate  like  an  insensate  mechanism  than  it  could 
reveal  itself  as  a  constant  purpose.  He  said  he  be 
lieved  that  in  every  great  moral  crisis,  in  every  ordeal 
of  conscience,  a  man  was  aware  of  standing  in  the 
presence  of  something  sent  to  try  him  and  test  him, 
and  that  this  something  was  the  Angel  of  the  Lord. 

"  He  went  off  that  night,  saying  to  himself,  '  The 
Angel  of  the  Lord,  the  Angel  of  the  Lord  ! '  and  when 
she  lay  a  long  time  awake,  waiting  for  him  to  go  to 
sleep,  she  heard  him  saying  it  again  in  his  room. 
She  thought  he  might  be  dreaming,  but  when  she 


142        THE  ANGEL  OF  THE  LORD. 

went  to  him,  he  had  his  lamp  lighted,  and  was  lying 
with  that  rapt  smile  on  his  face  which  she  was  so 
afraid  of.  She  told  him  she  was  afraid  and  she 
wished  he  would  not  say  such  things ;  and  that  made 
him  laugh,  and  he  put  his  arms  round  her,  and  laughed 
and  laughed,  and  said  it  was  only  a  kind  of  swearing, 
and  she  must  cheer  up.  He  let  her  give  him  some 
trional  to  make  him  sleep,  and  then  she  went  off  to 
her  bed  again.  But  when  they  both  woke  late,  she 
heard  him,  as  he  dressed,  repeating  fragments  of  verse, 
quoting  quite  without  order,  as  the  poem  drifted 
through  his  memory.  He  told  her  at  breakfast  that 
it  was  a  poem  which  Longfellow  had  written  to  Low 
ell  upon  the  occasion  of  his  wife's  death,  and  he 
wanted  to  get  it  and  read  it  to  her.  She  said  she  did 
not  see  how  he  could  let  his  mind  run  on  such  gloomy 
things.  But  he  protested  he  was  not  the  least  gloomy, 
and  that  he  supposed  his  recollection  of  the  poem 
was  a  continuation  of  his  thinking  about  the  Angel 
of  the  Lord. 

"  While  they  were  at  table  a  tramp  came  up  the 
drive  under  the  window,  and  looked  in  at  them  hun 
grily.  He  was  a  very  offensive  tramp,  and  quite  took 
Mrs.  Ormond's  appetite  away:  but  Ormond  would 
not  send  him  round  to  the  kitchen,  as  she  wanted  ;  he 


THE    ANGEL    OF    THE    LORD.  143 

insisted  upon  taking  him  a  plate  and  a  cup  of  coffee 
out  on  the  veranda  himself.  When  she  expostulated 
with  him,  he  answered  fantastically  that  the  fellow 
might  be  an  angel  of  the  Lord,  and  he  asked  her  if 
she  remembered  ParnelPs  poem  of  '  The  Hermit.'  Of 
course  she  didn't,  but  he  needn't  get  it,  for  she  didn't 
want  to  hear  it,  and  if  he  kept  making  her  so  nervous, 
she  should  be  sick  herself.  He  insisted  upon  telling 
her  what  the  poem  was,  and  how  the  angel  in  it  had 
made  himself  abhorrent  to  the  hermit  by  throttling 
the  babe  of  the  good  man  who  had  housed  and  fed 
them,  and  committing  other  atrocities,  till  the  hermit 
couldn't  stand  it  any  longer,  and  the  angel  explained 
that  he  had  done  it  all  to  prevent  the  greater  harm 
that  would  have  come  if  he  had  not  killed  and  stolen 
in  season.  Ormond  laughed  at  her  disgust,  and  said 
he  was  curious  to  see  what  a  tramp  would  do  that  was 
treated  with  real  hospitality.  He  thought  they  had 
made  a  mistake  in  not  asking  this  tramp  in  to  break 
fast  with  them ;  then  they  might  have  stood  a  chance 
of  being  murdered  in  their  beds  to  save  them  from 
mischief. 


VI. 

"MRS.  Ormond  really  lost  her  patience  with  him, 
and  felt  better  than  she  had  for  a  long  time  by  scold 
ing  him  in  good  earnest.  She  told  him  he  was  talking 
very  blasphemously,  and  when  he  urged  that  his 
morality  was  directly  in  line  with  Parnell's,  and  Par- 
nell  was  an  archbishop,  she  was  so  vexed  that  she 
would  not  go  to  drive  with  him  that  morning,  though 
he  apologized  and  humbled  himself  in  every  way. 
He  pleaded  that  it  was  such  a  beautiful  day,  it  must 
be  the  last  they  were  going  to  have ;  it  was  getting 
near  the  equinox,  and  this  must  be  a  weather-breeder. 
She  let  him  go  off  alone,  for  he  would  not  lose  the 
drive,  and  she  watched  him  out  of  sight  from  her 
upper  window  with  a  heavy  heart.  As  soon  as  he 
was  fairly  gone,  she  wanted  to  go  after  him,  and  she 
was  wild  all  the  forenoon.  She  could  not  stay  indoors, 
but  kept  walking  up  and  down  the  piazza  and  looking 
for  him,  and  at  times  she  went  a  bit  up  the  road  he 


THE  ANGEL  OF  THE  LORD.          145 

had  taken,  to  meet  him.  She  had  got  to  thinking  of 
the  tramp,  though  the  man  had  gone  directly  off  down 
another  road  after  he  had  his  breakfast.  At  last  she 
heard  the  old  creaking,  rattling  buggy,  and  as  soon  as 
she  saw.  Ormond's  bare  head,  and  knew  he  was  all 
right,  she  ran  up  to  her  room  and  shut  herself  in. 
But  she  couldn't  hold  out  against  him  when  he  came 
to  her  door  with  an  armful  of  wild  flowers  that  he  had 
gathered  for  her,  and  boughs  from  some  young  maples 
that  he  had  found  all  red  in  a  swamp.  She  showed 
herself  so  interested  that  he  asked  her  to  come  with 
him  after  their  midday  dinner  and  see  them,  and  she 
said  perhaps  she  would,  if  he  would  promise  not  to 
keep  talking  about  the  things  that  made  her  so  miser 
able.  He  asked  her,  *  What  things  ? '  and  she  answered 
that  he  knew7  well  enough,  and  he  laughed  and 
promised. 

"  She  didn't  believe  he  would  keep  his  word,  but 
he  did  at  first,  and  he  tried  not  to  tease  her  in  any 
way.  He  tried  to  please  her  in  the  whims  and  fancies 
she  had  about  going  this  way  or  that,  and  when  she 
decided  not  to  look  up  his  young  maples  with  him, 
because  the  first  autumn  leaves  made  her  melancholy, 
he  submitted.  He  put  his  arm  across  her  shoulder  as 
they  drove  through  the  woods,  and  pulled  her  to  him, 


146  THE    ANGEL    OF  THE    LORD. 

and  called  her  *  poor  old  thing, '  and  accused  her  of 
being  morbid,  lie  wanted  her  to  tell  him  all  there 
was  in  her  mind,  but  she  could  not;  she  could  only 
cry  on  his  arm.  He  asked  her  if  it  was  something 
about  him  that  troubled  her,  and  she  could  only  say 
that  she  hated  to  see  people  so  cheerful  without  rea 
son.  That  made  him  laugh,  and  they  were  very  gay- 
after  she  had  got  her  cry  out ;  but  he  grew  serious 
again.  Then  her  temper  rose,  and  she  asked,  '  Well, 
what  is  it  ? '  and  he  said  at  first,  '  Oh,  nothing, '  as 
people  do  when  there  is  really  something,  and  pres 
ently  he  confessed  that  he  was  thinking  about  what 
she  had  said  of  his  being  cheerful  without  reason. 
Then,  as  she  said,  he  talked  so  beautifully  that  she 
had  to  keep  her  patience  with  him,  though  he  was 
not  keeping  his  word  to  her.  His  talk,  as  far  as  she 
was  able  to  report  it,  didn't  amount  to  much  more 
than  this:  that  in  a  world  where  death  was,  people 
never  could  be  cheerful  with  reason  unless  death  was 
something  altogether  different  from  what  people  im 
agined.  After  people  came  to  their  intellectual 
consciousness,  death  was  never  wholly  out  of  it,  and 
if  they  could  be  joyful  with  that  black  drop  at  the 
bottom  of  every  cup,  it  was  proof  positive  that  death 
was  not  what  it  seemed.  Otherwise  there  was  no 


THE    ANGEL    OF   THE    LORD.  147 

logic  in  the  scheme  of  being,  but  it  was  a  cruel  fraud 
by  the  Creator  upon  the  creature ;  a  poor  practical 
joke,  with  the  laugh  all  on  one  side.  He  had  got  rid 
of  his  fear  of  it  in  that  light,  which  seemed  to  have 
come  to  him  before  the  fear  left  him,  and  he  wanted 
her  to  see  it  in  the  same  light,  and  if  he  died  before 
her —  But  there  she  stopped  him  and  protested  that 
it  would  kill  her  if  she  did  not  die  first,  with  no  ap 
parent  sense,  even  when  she  told  me,  of  her  fatuity, 
which  must  have  amused  poor  Ormond.  He  said 
what  he  wanted  to  ask  was  that  she  would  believe  he 
had  not  been  the  least  afraid  to  die,  and  he  wished 
her  to  remember  this  always,  because  she  knew  how 
he  always  used  to  be  afraid  of  dying.  Then  he  really 
began  to  talk  of  other  things,  and  he  led  the  way  back 
to  the  times  of  their  courtship  and  their  early  married 
days,  and  their  first  journeys  together,  and  all  their 
young-people  friends,  and  the  simple-hearted  pleasure 
they  used  to  take  in  society,  in  teas  and  dinners,  and 
going  to  the  theater.  He  did  not  like  to  think  how 
that  pleasure  had  dropped  out  of  their  life,  and  he  did 
not  know  why  they  had  let  it,  and  he  was  going  to 
have  it  again  when  they  went  to  town. 

"  They  had  thought  of  staying  a  long  time  in  the 
country,  perhaps  till  after  Thanksgiving,  for  they  had 


148  THE    ANGEL    OF   THE    LOUD. 

become  attached  to  their  place ;  but  now  they  sud 
denly  agreed  to  go  back  to  New  York  at  once.  She 
told  me  that  as  soon  as  they  agreed  she  felt  a  tre 
mendous  longing  to  be  gone  that  instant,  as  if  she 
must  go  to  escape  from  something,  some  calamity, 
and  she  felt,  looking  back,  that  there  was  a  prophetic 
quality  in  her  eagerness.  " 

*'  Oh,  she  was  always  so,  "  said  Minver.  u  When 
a  thing  was  to  be  done,  she  wanted  it  done  like  light 
ning,  no  matter  what  the  thing  was. ' 

"  Well,  very  likely,  "  Wanhope  consented.  "  I 
never  make  much  account  of  those  retroactive  fore 
bodings.  At  any  rate,  she  says  she  wanted  him  to 
turn  about  and  drive  home  so  that  they  could  begin 
packing,  and  when  he  demurred,  and.  began  to  tease, 
as  she  called  it,  she  felt  as  if  she  should  scream,  till 
he  turned  the  old  horse  and  took  the  back  track.  She 
was  wild  to  get  home,  and  kept  hurrying  him,  and 
wanting  him  to  whip  the  horse;  but  the  old  horse 
merely  wagged  his  tail,  and  declined  to  go  faster  than 
a  walk,  and  this  was  the  only  thing  that  enabled  her 
to  forgive  herself  afterward.  " 

"  Why,  what  had  she  done  ?  "  Rulledge  asked. 

"  She  would  have  been  responsible  for  what  hap 
pened,  according  to  her  notion,  if  she  had  had  her 


THE    ANGEL    OF   THE    LOKD.  149 

way  with  the  horse ;  she  would  have  felt  that  she  had 
driven  Ormond  to  his  doom.  " 

"  Of  course  !  "  said  Minver.  "  She  always  found 
a  hole  to  creep  out  of.  Why  couldn't  she  go  back  a 
little  further,  and  hold  herself  responsible  through 
having  made  him  turn  round  ? " 

"  Poor  woman  !  "  said  Rulledge,  with  a  tenderness 
that  made  Minver  smile.  "  What  was  it  that  did 
happen  ? " 

Wanhope  examined  his  cup  for  some  dregs  of  cof 
fee,  and  then  put  it  down  with  an  air  of  resignation. 
I  offered  to  touch  the  bell,  but,  "  No,  don't, "  he  said. 
"I'm  better  without  it.  "  And  he  went  on:  " There 
was  a  lonely  piece  of  woods  that  they  had  to  drive 
through  before  they  struck  the  avenue  leading  to 
their  house,  which  was  on  a  cheerful  upland  overlook 
ing  the  river,  and  when  they  had  got  about  half-way 
through  this  woods,  the  tramp  whom  Ormond  had  fed 
in  the  morning,  slipped  out  of  a  thicket  on  the  hillside 
above  them,  and  crossed  the  road  in  front  of  them, 
and  slipped  out  of  sight  among  the  trees  on  the  slope 
below.  Ormond  stopped  the  horse,  and  turned  to 
his  wife  with  a  strange  kind  of  whisper.  *  Did  you 
see  it  ? '  he  asked,  and  she  answered  yes,  and  bade 
him  drive  on.  He  did  so,  slowly  looking  back  round 


150         THE  ANGEL  OF  THE  LORD 

the  side  of  the  buggy  till  a  turn  of  the  road  hid  the 
place  where  the  tramp  had  crossed  their  track.  She 
could  not  speak,  she  says,  till  they  came  in  sight  of 
their  house.  Then  her  heart  gave  a  great  bound,  and 
she  broke  out  on  him,  blaming  him  for  having  en 
couraged  the  tramp  to  lurk  about,  as  he  must  have 
done,  all  day,  by  his  foolish  sentimentality  in  taking 
his  breakfast  out  to  him.  *  He  saw  that  you  were  a 
delicate  person,  and  now  to-night  he  will  be  coming 
round,  and —  She  says  Ormond  kept  looking  at  her, 
while  she  talked,  as  if  he  did  not  know  what  she  was 
saying,  and  all  at  once  she  glanced  down  at  their  feet, 
and  discovered  that  her  hat  was  gone. 

"  That,  she  owned,  made  her  frantic,  and  she  blazed 
out  at  him  again,  and  accused  him  of  having  lost  her 
hat  by  stopping  to  look  at  that  worthless  fellow,  and 
then  starting  up  the  horse  so  suddenly  that  it  had 
rolled  out.  He  usually  gave  her  as  good  as  she  sent 
when  she  let  herself  go  in  that  way,  and  she  told  me 
she  would  have  been  glad  if  he  had  done  it  now,  but 
he  only  looked  at  her  in  a  kind  of  daze,  and  when  he 
understood,  at  last,  he  bade  her  get  out  and  go  into 
the  house — they  were  almost  at  the  door, — and  he 
would  go  back  and  find  her  hat  himself.  'Indeed, 
you'll  do  nothing  of  the  kind, '  she  said  she  told  him. 


THE    ANGEL  OF    THE    LORD.  151 

'  I  shall  go  back  with  you,  or  you'll  be  hunting  up 
that  precious  vagabond  and  bringing  him  home  to 
supper.'  Ormond  said,  '  All  right, '  with  a  kind  of 
dreamy  passivity,  and  he  turned  the  old  horse  again, 
and  they  drove  slowly  back,  looking  for  the  hat  in 
the  road,  right  and  left.  She  had  not  noticed  before 
that  it  was  getting  late,  and  perhaps  it  was  not  so  late 
as  it  seemed  when  they  got  into  that  lonely  piece  of 
woods  again,  and  the  veils  of  shadow  began  to  drop 
round  them,  as  if  they  were  something  falling  from 
the  trees,  she  said.  They  found  the  hat  easily  enough 
at  the  point  where  it  must  have  rolled  out  of  the 
buggy,  and  he  got  down  and  picked  it  up.  She  kept 
scolding  him,  but  he  did  not  seem  to  hear  her.  lie 
stood  dangling  the  hat  by  its  ribbons  from  his  right 
hand,  while  he  rested  his  left  on  the  dashboard,  and 
looking — looking  down  into  the  wooded  slope  where 
the  tramp  had  disappeared.  A  cold  chill  went  over 
her,  and  she  stopped  her  scolding.  '  Oh,  Jim, '  she 
said,  *  do  you  see  something  ?  What  do  you  see  ? ' 
He  flung  the  hat  from  him,  and  ran  plunging  down 
the  hillside — she  covered  up  her  face  when  she  told 
me,  and  said  she  should  always  see  him  running — till 
the  dusk  among  the  trees  hid  him.  She  ran  after 
him,  and  she  heard  him  calling,  calling  joyfully,  'Yes, 


152         THE  ANGEL  OF  THE  LORD. 

I'm  coming ! '  and  she  thought  he  was  calling  back  to 
her,  but  the  rush  of  his  feet  kept  getting  farther,  and 
then  he  seemed  to  stop  with  a  sound  like  falling.  He 
couldn't  have  been  much  ahead  of  her,  for  it  was  only 
a  moment  till  she  stood  on  the  edge  of  a  boulder  in 
the  woods,  looking  over,  and  there  at  the  bottom 
Ormond  was  lying  with  his  face  turned  under  him,  as 
she  expressed  it ;  and  the  tramp,  with  a  heavy  stick 
in  his  hand,  was  standing  by  him,  stooping  over  him, 
and  staring  at  him.  She  began  to  scream,  and  it 
seemed  to  her  that  she  flew  down  from  the  brink  of 
the  rock,  and  caught  the  tramp  and  clung  to  him, 
while  she  kept  screaming  '  Murder ! '  The  man  didn't 
try  to  get  away ;  he  only  said,  over  and  over,  '  I  didn't 
touch  him,  lady ;  I  didn't  touch  him. '  It  all  happened 
simultaneously,  like  events  in  a  dream,  and  while 
there  was  nobody  there  but  herself  and  the  tramp, 
and  Ormond  lying  between  them,  there  were  some 
people  that  must  have  heard  her  from  the  road  and 
come  down  to  her.  They  were  neighbor-folk  that 
knew  her  and  Ormond,  and  they  naturally  laid  hold  of 
the  tramp ;  but  he  didn't  try  to  escape.  He  helped 
them  gather  poor  Ormond  up,  and  he  went  back  to 
the  house  with  them,  and  staid  while  one  of  them  ran 
for  the  doctor.  The  doctor  could  only  tell  them  that 
Ormond  was  dead,  and  that  his  neck  must  have  been 
broken  by  his  fall  over  the  rock.  One  of  the  neigh- 


THE    ANGEL    OF   THE    LORD.  153 

bors  went  to  look  at  the  place  the  next  morning,  and 
found  one  of  the  roots  of  a  young  tree  growing  on  the 
rock,  torn  out,  as  if  Ormond  had  caught  his  foot  in 
it;  and  that  had  probably  made  his  fall  a  headlong 
dive.  The  tramp  knew  nothing  but  that  he  heard 
shouting  and  running,  and  got  up  from  the  foot  of 
the  rock,  where  he  was  going  to  pass  the  night,  when 
something  came  flying  through  the  air,  and  struck  at 
his  feet.  Then  it  scarcely  stirred,  and  the  next  thing, 
he  said,  the  lady  was  onto  him,  screeching  and  tearing. 
He  piteously  protested  his  innocence,  which  was  ap 
parent  enough,  at  the  inquest,  and  before,  for  that 
matter.  He  said  Ormond  was  about  the  only  man 
that  ever  treated  him  white,  and  Mrs.  Ormond  was 
remorseful  for  having  let  him  get  away  before  she 
could  tell  him  that  she  didn't  blame  him,  and  ask  him 
to  forgive  her. " 


VII. 

WANIIOPE  desisted  with  a  provisional  air,  and  Rul 
ledge  went  and  got  himself  a  sandwich  from  the 
lunch-table. 

"  Well,  upon  my  word !  "  said  Minver.  "  I  thought 
you  had  dined,  Rulledge.  " 

Rulledge  came  back  munching,  and  said  to  Wan- 
hope,  as  he  settled  himself  in  his  chair  again :  "  Well, 
go  on.  " 

"  Why,  that's  all.  " 

The  psychologist  was  silent,  with  Rulledge  staring 
indignantly  at  him. 

"  I  suppose  Mrs.  Ormond  had  her  theory  ? "  I 
ventured. 

"  Oh,  yes — such  as  it  was,  "  said  Wanhope.  "  It 
was  her  belief — her  religion — that  Ormond  had  seen 
Death,  in  person  or  personified,  or  the  angel  of  it; 
and  that  the  sight  was  something  beautiful,  and  not 
terrible.  She  thought  that  she  should  see  Death,  too 


THE    ANGEL    OF   THE    LOUD.  155 

in  the  same  way,  as  a  messenger.  I  don't  know  that 
it  was  such  a  bad  theory, "  he  added  impartially. 

"  Not,  "  said  Minver,  "  if  you  suppose  that  Ormond 
was  off  his  nut.  But,  in  regard  to  the  whole  matter, 
there  is  always  a  question  of  how  much  truth  there 
was  in  what  she  said  about  it.  " 

"  Of  course,  "  the  psychologist  admitted,  "  that  is 
a  question  which  must  be  considered.  The  question 
of  testimony  in  such  matters  is  the  difficult  thing. 
You  might  often  believe  in  supernatural  occurrences 
if  it  were  not  for  the  witnesses.  It  is  very  interest 
ing,  "  he  pursued,  with  his  scientific  smile,  uto  note 
how  corrupting  anything  supernatural  or  mystical  is. 
Such  things  seem  mostly  to  happen  either  in  the  priv 
ity  of  people  who  are  born  liars,  or  else  they  deprave 
the  spectator  so,  through  his  spiritual  vanity  or  his 
love  of  the  marvelous,  that  you  can't  believe  a  word 
he  says. 

"  They  are  as  bad  as  horses  on  human  morals,  " 
said  Minver.  "  Not  that  I  think  it  ever  needed  the 
coming  of  a  ghost  to  invalidate  any  statement  of  Mrs. 
Ormond's.  "  Rulledge  rose  and  went  away  growling 
something,  partially  audible,  to  the  disadvantage  of 
Minver's  wit,  and  the  painter  laughed  after  him :  "  He 
really  believes  it.  " 


156         THE  ANGEL  OF  THE  LORD. 

Wanhope's  mind  seemed  to  be  shifted  from  Mrs. 
Ormond  to  her  convert,  whom  he  followed  with  his 
tolerant  eyes.  "  Nothing  in  all  this  sort  of  inquiry 
is  so  impossible  to  predicate  as  the  effect  of  any  given 
instance  upon  a  given  mind.  It  would  be  very  inter 
esting — 

"  Excuse  me  !  "  said  Minver.  "  There's  Whitley. 
I  must  speak  to  him.  " 

He  went  away,  leaving  me  alone  with  the  psy 
chologist. 

"And  what  is  your  own  conclusion  in  this  in 
stance  ? "  I  asked. 

"  AVhy,  I  haven't  formulated  it  yet. " 


THOUGH    ONE   EOSE   FROM   THE 
DEAD. 


THOUGH    ONE    EOSE   FEOM    THE 
DEAD. 

I. 

You  are  very  welcome  to  the  Alderling  incident, 
my  dear  Acton,  if  you  think  you  can  do  anything 
with  it,  and  I  will  give  it  as  circumstantially  as  pos 
sible.  The  thing  has  its  limitations,  I  should  think, 
for  the  fictionist,  chiefly  in  a  sort  of  roundedness 
which  leaves  little  play  to  the  imagination.  It  seems 
to  me  that  it  would  be  more  to  your  purpose  if  it 
were  less  pat,  in  its  catastrophe,  but  you  are  a  better 
judge  of  all  that  than  I  am,  and  I  will  put  the  facts  in 
your  hands,  and  keep  my  own  hands  off,  so  far  as 
any  plastic  use  of  the  material  is  concerned. 

The  first  I  knew  of  the  peculiar  Alderling  situation 

was  shortly  after  William  James's  "Will  to  Believe" 

came  out.     I  had  been  telling  the  Alderlings  about  it, 

for  they  had  not  seen  it,  and  I  noticed  that  from  time 

159 


160         THOUGH    ONE    ROSE  FROM  THE  DEAD. 

to  time  they  looked  significantly  at  each  other.  When 
I  had  got  through  he  gave  a  little  laugh,  and  she 
said,  "  Oh,  you  may  laugh !  "  and  then  I  made  bold 
to  ask,  "  What  is  it'? " 

"  Marion  can  tell  you,  "  he  said,  lie  motioned 
towards  the  coffee-pot  and  asked,  "  More  ? "  1  shook 
my  head,  and  he  said,  "  Come  out  and  let  us  see  what 
the  maritime  interests  have  been  doing  for  us.  Pipe 
or  cigar  ? "  I  chose  cigarettes,  and  he  brought  the  box 
off  the  table,  stopping  on  his  way  to  the  veranda,  and 
taking  his  pipe  and  tobacco-pouch  from  the  hall 
mantel. 

Mrs.  Alderling  had  got  to  the  veranda  before  us, 
and  done  things  to  the  chairs  and  cushions,  and  was 
leaning  against  one  of  the  slender  fluted  pine  columns 
like  some  rich,  blond  caryatid  just  off  duty,  with  the 
blue  of  her  dress  and  the  red  of  her  hair  showing 
deliciously  against  the  background  of  white  house- 
wall.  He  and  she  were  an  astonishing  and  satisfying 
contrast ;  in  the  midst  of  your  amazement  you  felt 
the  divine  propriety  of  a  woman  like  her  wanting  just 
such  a  wiry,  smoky-complexioned,  black-browed,  black- 
bearded,  bald-headed  little  man  as  he  was. 

Before  he  sat  down  where  she  was  going  to  put 
him,  he  stood  stoopingly,  and  frowned  at  the  waters 


THOUGH   ONE  ROSE    FROM  THE    DEAD.          161 

of  the  cove  lifting  from  the  foot  of  the  lawn  that 
sloped  to  it  before  the  house.  "  Three  lumbermen, 
two  goodish-sized  yachts,  a  dozen  sloop-rigged  boats : 
not  so  bad.  About  the  usual  number  that  come  loaf 
ing  in  to  spend  the  night.  You  ought  to  see  them 
when  it  threatens  to  breeze  up.  Then  they're  here  in 
flocks.  Go  on,  Marion.  " 

He  gave  a  soft  groan  of  comfort  as  he  settled  in 
his  chair  and  began  pulling  at  his  short  black  pipe, 
and  she  let  her  eyes  dwell  on  him  in  a  rapture  that 
curiously  interested  me.  People  in  love  are  rarely 
interesting — that  is,  flesh-and-blood  people.  Of 
course  I  know  that  lovers  are  the  life  of  fiction,  and 
that  a  story  of  any  kind  can  scarcely  hold  the  reader 
without  them.  The  love-interest,  as  they  call  it,  is 
also  supposed  to  be  essential  to  the  drama,  and  friends 
of  mine  who  have  tried  to  foist  their  plays  upon 
managers  have  been  overthrown  by  the  objection  that 
the  love-interest  is  not  strong  enough  in  what  they 
have  done.  Yet  lovers  in  real  life  are,  so  far  as  I  have 
observed  them,  bores.  They  are  confessed  to  be  dis 
gusting  before  or  after  marriage  when  they  let  their 
fondness  appear,  but  even  when  they  try  to  hide  it, 
they  are  tiresome.  Character  goes  down  before  pas 
sion  in  them ;  nature  is  reduced  to  propensity.  Then, 


162    THOUGH  ONE  ROSE  FROM  THE  DEAD. 

how  is  it  that  the  novelist  manages  to  keep  these,  and 
to  give  us  nature  and  character  while  seeming  to  offer 
nothing  but  propensity  and  passion?  Perhaps  he 
does  not  give  them.  Perhaps  what  he  does  is  to  hyp 
notize  us  so  that  we  each  of  us  identify  ourselves 
with  the  lovers,  and  add  our  own  natures  and  charac 
ters  to  the  single  principle  that  animates  them.  The 
reason  we  like,  that  we  endure,  to  read  about  them, 
may  be  that  they  are  ourselves  rendered  objective  in 
an  instant  of  intense  vitality,  without  the  least  trouble 
or  risk  to  us.  But  if  we  have  them  there  before  us 
in  the  tiresome  reality,  they  exclude  us  from  their 
pleasure  in  each  other  and  stop  up  the  perspective  of 
our  happiness  with  their  hulking  personalities,  bare  of 
all  the  iridescence  of  potentiality,  which  we  could  have 
cast  about  them.  Something  of  this  iridescence  may 
cling  to  unmarried  lovers,  in  spite  of  themselves,  but 
wedded  bliss  is  a  sheer  offence. 

I  do  not  know  why  it  was  not  an  offence  in  the  case 
of  the  Alderlings,  unless  it  was  because  they  both,  in 
their  different  ways,  saw  the  joke  of  the  thing;  At 
any  rate,  I  found  that  in  their  charm  for  each  other 
they  had  somehow  not  ceased  to  be  amusing  for  me, 
and  I  waited  confidently  for  the  answer  she  would 
make  to  his  whimsically  abrupt  bidding.  But  she  did 


THOUGH  ONE   ROSE  FROM  THE    DEAD.  163 

not  answer  very  promptly,  even  when  he  had  added, 
"  Wanhope,  here,  is  scenting  something  psychological 
in  the  reason  of  my  laughing  at  you,  instead  of  ac 
cepting  the  plain  inference  in  the  case.  " 

"  What  is  the  plain  inference  ? "  I  asked,  partly  to 
fill  up  Mrs.  Alderling's  continued  silence. 

"  When  a  man  laughs  at  a  woman  for  no  apparent 
reason  it  is  because  he  is  amused  at  her  being  afraid 
of  him  when  he  is  so  much  more  afraid  of  her,  or 
puzzled  by  him  when  she  is  such  an  incomparable 
riddle  herself,  or  caring  for  him  when  he  knows  he  is 
not  worth  his  salt.  " 

"  You  don't  expect  to  put  me  off  with  that  sort  of 
thing, "  I  said. 

"  Well,  then,  go  on  Marion,  "  Alderling  repeated. 
11 


II. 

MRS.  Alderling  stood  looking  at  him,  not  me,  with 
a  smile  hovering  about  the  corners  of  her  month, 
which,  when  it  decided  not  to  alight  anywhere, 
scarcely  left  her  aspect  graver  for  its  flitting.  She 
said  at  last,  in  her  slow,  deep-throated  voice,  "  I 
guess  I  will  let  you  tell  him.  " 

44  Oh,  Til  tell  him  fast  enough,  "  said  Alderling, 
nursing  his  knee,  and  bringing  it  well  up  toward  his 
chin,  between  his  clasped  hands.  "  Marion  has  always 
had  the  notion  that  I  should  live  again  if  I  believed  I 
should,  and  that  as  I  don't  believe  I  shall,  I  am  not 
going  to.  The  joke  of  it  is, ''  and  he  began  to  splutter 
laughter  round  the  stem  of  his  pipe,  u  she's  as  much 
of  an  agnostic  as  I  am.  She  doesn't  believe  she  is 
going  to  live  again,  either." 

Mrs.  Alderling  said,  '4 1  don't  care  for  it  in  my 
case. " 

That  struck  me  as  rather  touching,  but  I  had  no 
right  to  enter  uninvited  into  the  intimacy  of  he1 


THOUGH  ONE  ROSE  FROM  THE  DEAD.     165 

meaning,  and  I  said,  looking  as  little  at  her  as  I  need, 
"  Aren't  you  both  rather  belated  ?  " 

"You  mean  that  protoplasm  has  gone  out?"  he 
chuckled. 

u  Xot  exactly,  "  I  answered.  "  But  you  know  that 
a  great  many  things  are  allowed  now  that  were  once 
forbidden  to  the  True  Disbeliever.  " 

"  You  mean  that  we  may  trust  in  the  promises,  as 
they  used  to  be  called,  and  still  keep  the  Unfaith  ?  " 

"  Something  like  that.  " 

Alderling  took  his  pipe  out,  apparently  to  give  his 
whole  face  to  the  pleasure  of  teasing  his  wife. 

"  That'll  be  a  great  comfort  to  Marion, "  he  said, 
and  he  threw  back  his  head  and  laughed. 

She  smiled  faintly,  vaguely,  tolerantly,  as  if  she 
enjoyed  his  pleasure  in  teasing  her. 

"  Where  have  you  been,"  I  asked,  "  that  you  don't 
know  the  changed  attitude  in  these  matters  ? " 

"  Well,  here  for  the  last  three  years.  We  tried  it 
the  first  winter  after  we  came,  and  found  it  was  not 
so  bad,  and  we  simply  stayed  on.  But  I  haven't  real 
ly  looked  into  the  question  since  I  gave  the  conundrum 
up  twenty  years  ago,  on  what  was  then  the  best 
authority.  Marion  doesn't  complain.  She  knew  what 
I  was  when  she  married  me.  She  was  another.  We 


166    THOUGH  ONE  ROSE  FROM  THE  DEAD. 

were  neither  of  us  very  bigoted  disbelievers.  We 
should  not  have  burned  anybody  at  the  stake  for  say 
ing  that  we  had  souls.  " 

Alderling  put  back  his  pipe  and  cackled  round  it, 
taking  his  knee  between  his  hands  again. 

"  You  know,  "  she  explained,  more  in  my  direction 
than  to  me,  "  that  I  had  none  to  begin  with.  But 
Alderling  had.  His  people  believed  in  the  future 
life.  " 

"  That's  what  they  said,  "  Alderling  crowed.  "  And 
Marion  has  always  thought  that  if  she  had  believed 
that  way,  she  could  have  kept  me  up  to  it;  and  so 
when  I  died  I  should  have  lived  again.  It  is  perfectly 
logical,  though  it  isn't  capable  of  a  practical  demon 
stration.  If  Marion  had  come  of  a  believing  family, 
she  could  have  brought  me  back  into  the  fold.  Her 
great  mistake  was  in  being  brought  up  by  an  uncle 
who  denied  that  he  was  living  here,  even.  The  poor 
girl  could  not  do  a  thing  when  it  came  to  the  life 
hereafter. " 

The  smile  now  came  hovering  back,  and  alighted 
at  a  corner  of  Mrs.  Alderling's  mouth,  making  it  look, 
oddly  enough,  rather  rueful.  "  It  didn't  matter  about 
me.  I  thought  it  a  pity  that  Alderling's  talent  should 
stop  here.  " 


THOUGH  ONE    ROSE    FROM  THE  DEAD.          167 

"  Did  you  ever  know  anything  like  that  ? "  he  cried. 
"  Perfectly  willing  to  thrust  me  out  into  a  cold  other- 
world,  and  leave  me  to  struggle  on  without  her,  when 
I  had  got  used  to  her  looking  after  me.  Now  I'm 
not  so  selfish  as  that.  I  shouldn't  want  to  have  Ma 
rion  living  on  through  all  eternity  if  I  wasn't  with 
her.  It  would  be  too  lonely  for  her.  " 

He  looked  up  at  her,  with  his  dancing  eyes,  and 
she  put  her  hand  down  over  his  shoulder  into  the 
hand  that  he  lifted  to  meet  it,  in  a  way  that  would 
have  made  me  sick  in  some  people.  But  in  her  the 
action  was  so  casual,  so  absent,  that  it  did  not  affect 
me  disagreeably. 

"  Do  you  mean  that  you  haven't  been  away  since 
you  came  here  three  years  ago  ? "  I  asked. 

"  We  ran  up  to  the  theatre  once  in  Boston  last  win 
ter,  but  it  bored  us  to  the  limit.  "  Alderling  poked 
his  knife-blade  into  the  bowl  of  his  pipe  as  he  spoke, 
having  freed  his  hand  for  the  purpose,  while  Mrs. 
Alderling  leaned  back  against  the  slim  column  again. 
He  said  gravely :  "It  was  a  great  thing  for  Marion, 
though.  In  view  of  the  railroad  accident  that  didn't 
happen,  she  convinced  herself  that  her  sole  ambition 
was  that  we  should  die  together.  Then,  whether  we 
found  ourselves  alive  or  not,  we  should  be  company 


168    THOUGH  ONE  HOSE  FROM  THE  DEAD. 

for  each  other.  She's  got  it  arranged  with  the  thunder 
storms,  so  that  one  bolt  will  do  for  us  both,  and  she 
never  lets  me  go  out  on  the  water  alone,  for  fear  I 
shall  watch  my  chance,  and  get  drowned  without  her.  " 

I  did  not  trouble  myself  to  make  out  how  much  of 
this  was  mocking,  and  as  there  was  no  active  partici 
pation  in  the  joke  expected  of  me,  I  kept  on  the  safe 
side  of  laughing.  "  No  wonder  you've  been  able  to 
do  such  a  lot  of  pictures, "  I  said.  "  But  I  should 
have  thought  you  might  have  found  it  dull — I  mean 
dull  together — at  odd  times.  " 

"  Dull  ?  "  he  shouted.  "It's  stupendously  dull ! 
Especially  when  our  country  neighbors  come  in  to 
'  'liven  us  up.  *  We've  got  neighbors  here  that  can 
stay  longer  in  half  an  hour  than  most  people  can  in  a 
week.  We  get  tired  of  each  other  at  times,  but  after 
a  call  from  the  people  in  the  next  house,  we  return 
with  rapture  to  our  delusion  that  we  are  interesting.  " 

"  And  you  never,  "  I  ventured,  making  my  jocosity 
as  ironical  as  possible,  "  wear  upon  each  other  2 " 

"  Horribly  !  "  said  Alderling,  and  his  wife  smiled 
contentedly,  behind  him.  "  We  haven't  a  whole  set 
of  china  in  the  house,  from  exchanging  it  across  the 
table,  and  I  haven't  made  a  study  of  Marion — you 
must  have  noticed  how  many  Marions  there  were — 


THOUGH  ONE  ROSE  FROM  THE  DEAD.     169 

that  she  hasn't  thrown  at  my  head.  Especially  the 
Madonnas.  She  likes  to  throw  the  Madonnas  at  me.  " 

I  ventured  still  farther,  addressing  myself  to  Mrs. 
Alderling.  "  Does  he  keep  it  up  all  the  time  — this 
blague  ?  " 

"  Pretty  much, "  she  answered  passively,  with 
entire  acquiescence  in  the  fact  if  it  were  the  fact,  or 
the  joke  if  it  were  the  joke. 

"  But  I  didn't  see  anything  of  yours,  Mrs.  Alder^ 
ling,  "  I  said.  She  had  had  her  talent,  as  a  girl,  and 
some  people  preferred  it  to  her  husband's, — but  there 
was  no  effect  of  it  anywhere  in  the  house. 

"  The  housekeeping  is  enough, "  she  answered,  with 
her  tranquil  smile. 

There  was  nothing  in  her  smile  that  was  leading, 
and  I  did  not  push  my  inquiry,  especially  as  Alderling 
did  not  seem  disposed  to  assist.  "  Well,  "  I  said,  "  I 
suppose  you  will  forgive  to  science  my  feeling  that 
your  situation  is  most  suggestive.  " 

"  Oh,  don't  mind  us  f  "  said  Alderling. 

"  I  won't,  thank  you,  "  I  answered.  "  Why,  it's 
equal  to  being  cast  away  together  on  an  uninhabited 
island. " 

"  Quite,  "  he  assented. 

"  There  can't, "  I  went  on,  "  be  a  corner  of   your 


170    THOUGH  ONE  ROSE  FROM  THE  DEAD. 

minds  that  you  haven't  mutually  explored.  You  must 
know  each  other, "  I  cast  about  for  the  word,  and 
added  abruptly,  "  by  heart.  " 

"  I  don't  suppose  he  meant  anything  pretty  ? "  said 
Aldelirng,  with  a  look  up  over  his  shoulder  at  his 
wife ;  and  then  he  said  to  me,  "  We  do ;  and  there 
are  some  very  curious  things  I  could  tell  you,  if  Ma 
rion  would  ever  let  me  get  in  a  word.  " 

"  Do  let  him,  Mrs.  Alderling,  "  I  entreated,  humor 
ing  his  joke  at  her  silence. 

She  smiled,  and  softly  shrugged,  and  then  sighed. 

"  I  could  make  your  flesh  creep, "  he  went  on,  "  or 
I  could  if  you  were  not  a  psychologist.  I  assure  you 
that  we  are  quite  weird  at  times.  " 

"  As  how « " 

"  Oh,  just  knowing  what  the  other  is  thinking,  at  a 
given  moment,  and  saying  it.  There  are  times  when 
Marion's  thinking  is  such  a  nuisance  to  me,  that  I 
have  to  yell  down  to  her  from  my  loft  to  stop  it.  The 
racket  it  makes  breaks  me  all  up.  It's  a  relief  to  have 
her  talk,  and  I  try  to  make  her,  when  she's  posing, 
just  to  escape  the  din  of  her  thinking.  Then  the 
willing !  We  experimented  with  it,  after  we  had  first 
noticed  it,  but  we  don't  any  more.  It's  too  dead 
easy. " 


THOUGH  ONE  ROSE  FROM  THE   DEAD.          171 

"  What  do  you  mean  by  the  willing  ? "  I  asked. 

"  Oh,  just  wishing  one  that  the  other  was  there,  and 
there  he  or  she  is.  " 

"  Is  he  trying  to  work  me,  Mrs.  Alderling  ?  "  I  ap 
pealed  to  her,  and  she  answered  from  her  calm : 

"  It  is  very  unaccountable.  " 

"  Then  you  really  mean  it !  Why  can't  you  give 
me  an  illustration  ? " 

"  Why,  you  know, "  said  Alderling  more  seriously 
than  he  had  yet  spoken,  "I  don't  believe  those  things, 
if  they  are  real,  can  ever  be  got  to  show  off.  That's 
the  reason  why  your '  Quests  in  the  Occult'  are  mainly 
such  rubbish,  as  far  as  the  evidences  are  concerned. 
If  Marion  and  I  tried  to  give  you  an  illustration,  as 
you  call  it,  the  occult  would  snub  us.  But  is  there 
anything  so  very  strange  about  it  ?  The  wonder  is 
that  a  man  and  wife  ever  fail  of  knowing  each  what 
the  other  is  thinking.  They  pervade  each  other's 
minds,  if  they  are  really  married,  .and  they  are  so 
present  with  each  other  that  the  tacit  wish  should  be 
the  same  as  a  call.  Marion  and  I  are  only  an  inten 
sified  instance  of  what  may  be  done  by  living  together. 
There  is  something,  though,  that  is  rather  queer,  but 
it,  belongs  to  psychomancy  rather  than  psychology,  as 
I  understand  it.  " 


172    THOUGH  ONE  ROSE  FROM  THE  DEAD. 

"  Ah  !  "  1  said.    "  What  is  that  queer  something  ? " 

"  Being  visibly  present  when  absent.  It  has  not 
happened  often,  but  it  has  happened  that  I  have  seen 
Marion  in  my  loft  when  she  was  really  somewhere 
else  and  not  when  I  had  willed  her  or  wished  her  to 
be  ther'e. " 

"  Now,  really,  "  I  said,  "  I  must  ask  you  for  an 
instance.  " 

"  You  want  to  heap  up  facts,  Lombroso  fashion  ? 
Well,  this  is  as  good  as  most  of  Lombroso's  facts,  or 
better.  I  went  up  one  morning,  last  winter,  to  work 
at  a  study  of  a  Madonna  from  Marion,  directly  after 
breakfast,  and  left  her  below  in  the  dining-room, 
putting  away  the  breakfast  things.  She  has  to  do 
that  occasionally,  between  the  local  helps,  who  are  all 
we  can  get  in  the  winter.  She  professes  to  like  it, 
but  you  never  can  tell,  from  what  a  woman  says ;  she 
has  to  do  it,  anyway.  "  It  is  hard  to  convey  a  notion 
of  the  serene,  impersonal  acquiescence  of  Mrs.  Alder- 
ling  in  taking  this  talk  of  her.  "  I  was  banging  away 
at  it  when  I  knew  she  was  behind  me  looking  over 
my  shoulder  rather  more  stormily  than  she  usually 
does ;  usually,  she  is  a  dead  calm.  I  glanced  up,  and 
saw  the  calm  succeed  the  storm.  I  kept  on,  and  after 
awhile  I  was  aware  of  hearing  her  step  on  the  stairs.  " 


THOUGH    ONE  ROSE  FROM  THE   DEAD.          173 

Aider! ing  stopped,  and  smoked  definitively,  as  if 
that  were  the  end. 

"  Well,  "  I  said,  after  waiting  a  while,  "  I  don't 
exactly  get  the  unique  value  of  the  incident. " 

"  Oh,  "  he  said,  as  if  he  had  accidentally  forgotten 
the  detail,  "  the  steps  were  coming  up  ? " 

"  Yes  ? " 

"  She  opened  the  door,  which  she  had  omitted  to 
do  before,  and  when  she  came  in  she  denied  having 
been  there  already.  She  owned  that  she  had  been 
hurrying  through  her  work,  and  thinking  of  mine,  so 
as  to  make  me  do  something,  or  undo  something,  to 
it ;  and  then  all  at  once  she  lost  her  impatience,  and 
came  up  at  her  leisure.  I  don't  exactly  like  to  tell 
what  she  wanted.  " 

He  began  to  laugh  provokingly,  and  she  said,  tran 
quilly,  "  I  don't  mind  your  telling  Mr.  Wanhope,  " 

"  Well,  then,  strictly  in  the  interest  of  psychomancy, 
I  will  confide  that  she  had  found  some  traces  of  a 
model  that  I  used  to  paint  my  Madonnas  from,  before 
we  were  married,  in  that  picture.  She  had  slept  on 
her  suspicion,  and  then  when  she  could  not  stand  it 
any  longer,  she  had  come  up  in  the  spirit  to  say  that 
she  was  not  going  to  be  mixed  up  in  a  Madonna  with 
any  such  minx.  The  words  are  mine,  but  the  mean. 


174          Tlioroil  OXK    HOSK    FROM  THE    DKAD. 

ing  was  Marion's,  When  she  found  me  taking  the 
minx  out,  sin*  went  quietly  l*a<-k  to  washing  lier 
dishes,  and  then  returned  in  the  body  to  give  me  a 
sitting. " 


'M    AKKAII)    I'M    UKSroNSIISLK    FOK    THAT" 


III. 

WE  were  silent  a  moment,  till  I  asked,  "Is  this 
true,  Mrs.  Alderling?" 

"  About, "  she  said.  "  I  don't  remember  the  storm, 
exactly.  " 

"  Well,  I  don't  see  why  you  bother  to  remain  in 
the  body  at  all,  "  I  remarked. 

"  We  haven't  arranged  just  how  to  leave  it  togeth 
er,  "  said  Alderling.  "  Marion,  here,  if  I  managed  to 
get  off  first,  would  have  no  means  of  knowing  whether 
her  theory  of  the  effect  of  my  unbelief  on  my  future 
was  right  or  not;  and  if  she  gave  me  the  slip,  she 
would  always  be  sorry  that  she  had  not  stayed  here 
to  convert  me. " 

"  Why  don't  you  agree  that  if  either  of  you  lives 
again,  he  or  she  shall  make  some  sign  to  let  the  other 
know  ? "  I  suggested. 

"  Well,  that  has  been  tried  so  often,  and  has  it  ever 
worked?  It's  open  to  the  question  whether  the  dead 


176    THOUGH  ONE  ROSE  FROM  THE  DEAD 

do  not  fail  to  show  up  because  they  are  forbidden  to 
communicate  with  the  living;  and  you  are  just  where 
you  were,  as  to  the  main  point.  No,  I  don't  see  any 
way  out  of  it. " 

Mrs.  Alderling  went  into  the  house  and  came  out 
with  a  book  in  her  hand,  and  her  fingers  in  it  at  two 
places.  It  was  that  impressive  collection  of  Christ's 
words  from  the  New  Testament  called  "  The  Great 
Discourse."  She  put  the  book  before  me,  first  at  one 
place  and  then  at  another,  and  I  read,  "  Whosoever 
liveth  and  believeth  in  me  shall  never  die,"  and  then, 
"  Nay,  but  except  ye  repent,  ye  shall  all  likewise 
perish.  "  She  did  not  say  anything  in  showing  me 
these  passages,  and  I  found  something  in  her  action 
touchingly  childlike  and  elemental,  as  well  as  curiously 
heathenish.  It  was  as  if  some  poor  pagan  had  brought 
me  his  fetish  to  test  its  effect  upon  me.  "  Yes,  "  I 
said,  "  those  are  things  that  we  hardly  know  what  to 
do  with  in  our  philosophy.  They  seem  to  be  said  as 
with  authority,  and  yet,  somehow,  we  cannot  admit 
their  validity  in  a  philosophical  inquiry  as  to  a  future 
life.  Aren't  they  generally  taken  to  mean  that  we 
shall  be  unhappy  or  happy  hereafter,  rather  than  that 
we  shall  be  or  not  be  at  all  ?  And  what  is  believing  ? 
Is  it  the  mere  act  of  acknowledgement,  or  is  it 


THOUGH  ONE  ROSE    FROM   THE    DEAD.          177 

something  more  vital,  which  expresses  itself  in  con 
duct?" 

She  did  not  try  to  say.  In  fact  she  did  not  answer 
at  all.  Whatever  point  was  in  her  mind  she  did  not, 
or  could  not,  debate  it.  I  perceived,  in  a  manner,  that 
her  life  was  so  largely  subliminal  that  if  she  had  tried 
she  could  not  have  met  my  question  any  more  than 
if  she  had  not  had  the  gift  of  speech  at  all.  But,  in 
her  inarticulate  fashion,  she  had  exposed  to  me  a  state 
of  mind  which  I  was  hardly  withheld  by  the  decencies 
from  exploring.  "  You  know,  "  I  said,  "  that  psychol 
ogy  almost  begins  by  rejecting  the  authority  of  these 
sayings,  and  that  while  we  no  longer  deny  anything, 
we  cannot  allow  anything  merely  because  it  has  been 
strongly  affirmed.  Supposing  that  there  is  a  life  after 
this,  how  can  it  be  denied  to  one  and  bestowed  upon 
another  because  one  has  assented  to  a  certain  super 
natural  claim  and  another  has  refused  to  do  so  ?  That 
does  not  seem  reasonable,  it  does  not  seem  right. 
Why  should  you  base  your  conclusion  as  to  that  life 
upon  a  promise  and  a  menace  which  may  not  really 
refer  to  it  in  the  sense  which  they  seem  to  have  ?  " 

"  Isn't  it  all  there  is  ?  "  she  asked,  and  Alderling 
burst  into  his  laugh. 

"  I'm  afraid  she's  got  you  there,  Wanhope.     When 


THF 
UNIVERSITY 


178    THOUGH  ONE  ROSE  FROM  THE  DEAD. 

it  comes  to  polemics  there's  nothing  like  the  passive 
obstruction  of  Mrs.  Alderling.  Marion  might  never 
have  been  an  early  Christian  herself — I  think  she's 
an  inexpugnable  pagan — but  she  would  have  ^one 
round  making  it  awfully  uncomfortable  for  the  other 
unbelievers. " 

"  You  know ,  "  she  said  to  him,  and  I  never  could 
decide  how  much  she  was  in  earnest,  "  that  I  can't 
believe  till  you  do.  I  couldn't  take  the  risk  of  keep 
ing  on  without  you.  " 

Alderling  followed  her  in-doors,  where  she  now 
went  to  put  the  book  away,  with  the  mock  addressed 
to  me,  "  Did  you  ever  know  such  a  stubborn  wo- 


IV. 

ONE  conclusion  from  my  observation  of  the  Alder- 
lings  during  the  week  I  spent  with  them  was  that  it 
is  bad  for  a  husband  and  wife  to  be  constantly  and 
unreservedly  together,  not  because  they  grow  tired  of 
each  other,  but  because  they  grow  more  intensely  in 
terested  in  each  other.  Children,  when  they  come, 
serve  the  purpose  of  separating  the  parents;  they 
seem  to  unite  them  in  one  care,  but  they  divide  them 
in  their  employments,  at  least  in  the  normally  consti 
tuted  family.  If  they  are  rich,  and  can  throw  the 
care  of  the  children  upon  servants,  then  they  cannot 
enjoy  the  relief  from  each  other  that  children  bring 
to  the  mother  who  nurtures  and  teaches  them,  and  to 
the  father  who  must  work  for  them  harder  than  be 
fore.  The  Alderlings  were  not  rich  enough  to  have 
been  freed  from  the  wholesome  responsibilities  of 
parentage,  but  they  were  childless,  and  so  they  were 

not  detached  from  the  perpetual  thought  of  each  other. 
12 


180         THOUGH  ONE  ROSE  FROM  THE    DEAD. 

If  they  had  only  had  different  tastes,  it  might  have 
been  better,  but  they  were  both  artists,  she  not  less 
than  he,  though  she  no  longer  painted.  When  their 
common  thoughts  were  not  centred  upon  each  other's 
being,  they  were  centred  on  his  work,  which,  viciously 
enough,  was  the  constant  reproduction  of  her  visible 
personality.  I  could  always  see  them  studying  each 
other,  he  with  an  eye  to  her  beauty,  she  with  an  eye 
to  his  power. 

He  was  every  now  and  then  saying  to  her,  "  Hold 
on,  Marion,  "  and  staying  her  in  some  pose  or  move 
ment,  while  he  made  mental  note  of  it,  and  I  was 
conscious  of  her  preying  upon  his  inmost  thoughts 
and  following  him  into  the  recesses  of  his  reveries, 
where  it  is  best  for  a  man  to  be  alone,  even  if  he  is 
sometimes  a  beast  there.  She  was  not  like  those 
wives  who  ask  their  husbands,  when  they  do  not  hap 
pen  to  be  talking,  "  What  are  you  thinking  about  ? " 
and  I  put  this  to  her  credit,  till  I  realized  that  she 
had  no  need  to  ask,  for  she  knew  already.  Now  and 
then  I  saw  him  get  up  and  shake  himself  restively, 
but  I  am  bound  to  say  in  her  behalf,  that  her  pursuit 
of  him  seemed  quite  involuntary,  and  that  she  enjoyed 
it  no  more  than  he  did.  Twenty  times  I  was  on  the 
point  of  asking,  "  Why  don't  you  people  go  in  for  a 


THOUGH  ONE  ROSE  FROM  THE  DEAD.    181 

good  long  separation  ?  Is  there  nothing  to  call  you 
to  Europe,  Alderling  ?  Haven't  you  got  a  mother,  or 
sister,  or  some  one  that  you  could  visit,  Mrs.  Alder- 
ling  ?  It  would  do  you  both  a  world  of  good.  " 

But  it  happened,  oddly  enough,  that  the  Alderlings 
were  as  kinless  as  they  were  childless,  and  if  he  had 
gone  to  Europe  he  would  have  taken  her  with  him, 
and  prolonged  their  seclusion  by  the  isolation  in 
which  people  necessarily  live  in  a  foreign  country. 
I  found  I  was  the  only  acquaintance  who  had  visited 
them  during  the  years  of  their  retirement  on  the  coast, 
where  they  had  stayed,  partly  through  his  inertia,  and 
partly  from  his  superstition  that  he  could  paint 
better  away  from  the  ordinary  associations  and  in 
centives;  and  they  ceased,  before  I  left,  to  get  the 
good  they  might  of  my  visit  because  they  made  me  a 
part  of  their  intimacy,  instead  of  making  themselves 
part  of  my  strangeness. 

After  a  day  or  two,  their  queer  experiences  began 
to  resume  themselves,  unabashed  by  my  presence. 
These  were  mostly  such  as  they  had  already  more 
than  hinted  to  me:  the  thought-transferences,  and 
the  unconscious  hypnotic  suggestions  which  they 
made  to  each  other.  There  was  more  novelty  in  the 
last  than  the  first.  If  I  could  trust  them,  and  they 


182          THOUGH    ONE   ROSE  FROM  THE  DEAD. 

did  not  seem  to  wish  to  exploit  their  mysteries  for 
the  effect  on  me,  they  were  with  each  other  because 
one  or  the  other  had  willed  it.  She  would  say,  if  we 
were  sitting  together  without  him,  "  I  think  Rupert 
wants  me ;  I'll  be  back  in  a  moment, "  and  he,  if  she 
were  not  by,  for  some  time,  would  get  up  with,  "  Ex 
cuse  me,  I  must  go  to  Marion ;  she's  calling  me.  " 

I  had  to  take  a  great  deal  of  this  on  faith ;  in  fact, 
none  of  it  was  susceptible  of  proof;  but  I  have  not 
been  able  since  to  experience  all  the  skepticism  which 
usually  replaces  the  impression  left  by  sympathy  with 
such  supposed  occurrences.  The  thing  was  not  quite 
what  we  call  uncanny;  the  people  were  so  honest, 
both  of  them,  that  the  morbid  character  of  like 
situations  was  wanting.  The  events,  if  they  could  be 
called  so,  were  not  invited,  I  was  quite  sure,  and  they 
were  varied  by  such  diversions  as  we  had  in  reach. 
I  went  blueberrying  with  Mrs.  Alderling  in  the  morn 
ing  after  she  had  got  her  breakfast  dishes  put  away, 
in  order  that  we  might  have  something  for  dessert  at 
our  midday  dinner ;  and  I  went  fishing  off  the  old 
stone  crib  with  Alderling  in  the  afternoon,  so  that  we 
might  have  cunners  for  supper.  The  farmerfolks  and 
fisherfolks  seemed  to  know  them  and  to  be  on  tolerant 
terms  with  them,  though  it  was  plain  that  they  still 


THOUGH  ONE  HOSE  FROM  THE  DEAD     183 

considered  them  probational  in  their  fellow-citizenship. 
I  do  not  think  they  were  liked  the  less  because  they 
did  not  assume  to  be  of  the  local  sort,  but  let  their 
difference  stand,  if  it  would.  There  was  nothing 
countrified  in  her  dress,  which  was  frankly  conven 
tional  ;  the  short  walking-skirt  had  as  sharp  a  slant 
in  front  as  her  dinner-gown  would  have  had,  and  he 
wore  his  knickerbockers — it  was  then  the  now-faded 
hour  of  knickerbockers — with  an  air  of  going  out 
golfing  in  the  suburbs.  They  stood  on  ceremony  in 
addressing  the  natives,  who  might  have  been  Jim  or 
Liza  to  each  other,  but  were  always  Mr.  Donald  or 
Mrs.  Moody,  with  the  Alderlings.  They  said  they 
would  not  like  being  called  by  their  first  names  them 
selves,  and  they  did  not  see  why  they  should  take 
that  freedom  with  others.  Neither  by  nature  nor  by 
nurture  were  they  out  of  the  ordinary  in  their  ideals, 
and  it  was  by  a  sort  of  accident  that  they  were  so 
different  in  their  realities.  She  had  stayed  on  with 
him  through  the  first  winter  in  the  place  they  had 
taken  for  the  summer,  because  she  wished  to  be  with 
him,  rather  than  because  she  wished  to  be  there,  and 
he  had  stayed  because  he  had  not  just  found  the  mo 
ment  to  break  away,  though  afterwards  he  pretended 
a  reason  for  staying.  They  had  no  more  voluntarily 


184    THOUGH  ONE  ROSE  FROM  THE  DEAD. 

cultivated  the  natural  than  the  supernatural ;  he  kin 
dled  the  fire  for  her,  and  she  made  the  coffee  for 
him,  not  because  they  preferred,  but  because  they 
must;  and  they  had  arrived  at  their  common  ground 
in  the  occult  by  virtue  of  being  alone  together,  and 
not  by  seeking  the  solitude  for  the  experiment  which 
the  solitude  promoted.  Mrs.  Alderling  did  not  talk 
less,  nor  he  more,  when  either  was  alone  with  me, 
than  when  we  were  all  together ;  perhaps  he  was  more 
silent,  and  she  not  quite  so  much ;  she  was  making 
up  for  him  in  his  absence  as  he  was  for  her  in  her 
presence.  But  they  were  always  hospitable  and 
attentive  hosts,  and  though  under  the  peculiar  cir 
cumstances  of  Mrs.  Alderling's  having  to  do  the 
house-work  I  necessarily  had  to  do  a  good  many 
things  for  myself,  there  were  certain  little  graces 
which  were  never  wanting,  from  her  hands :  my  cur 
tains  were  always  carefully  drawn,  and  my  coverlet 
triangularly  opened,  so  that  I  did  not  have  to  pull  it 
down  myself.  There  was  a  freshly  trimmed  lamp  on 
the  stand  at  my  bed-head,  and  a  book  and  paper- 
cutter  put  there,  with  a  decanter  of  whiskey  and  a 
glass  of  water.  I  note  these  things  to  you,  because 
they  are  touches  which  help  remove  the  sense  of  any 
thing  intentional  in  the  occultism  of  the  Alderlings. 


THOUGH   ONE    ROSE  FROM  THE   DEAD.          185 

I  do  not  know  whether  I  shall  be  able  to  impart 
the  feeling  of  an  obscure  pathos  in  the  case  of  Mrs. 
Alderling,  which  I  certainly  did  not  experience  in 
Alderling's.  Temperamentally  he  was  less  fitted  to 
undergo  the  rigors  of  their  seclusion  than  she  was; 
in  his  liking  to  talk,  he  needed  an  audience  and  a 
variety  of  listening,  and  she,  in  her  somewhat  feline 
calm,  could  not  have  been  troubled  by  any  such  need. 
You  can  be  silent  to  yourself,  but  you  cannot  very 
well  be  loquacious,  without  danger  of  having  the  devil 
for  a  listener,  if  the  old  saying  is  true.  Yet  still,  I 
felt  a  keener  poignancy  in  her  sequestration.  Her 
beauty  had  even  greater  claim  to  regard  than  his 
eloquence.  She  was  a  woman  who  could  have  com 
manded  a  whole  roomful  with  it,  and  no  one  would 
have  wanted  a  word  from  her.  She  could  only  have 
been  entirely  herself  in  society,  where,  and  in  spite  of 
everything  that  can  be  said  against  it,  we  can  each,  if 
we  will,  be  more  natural  than  out  of  it.  The  reason 
that  most  of  us  are  not  natural  in  it  is  that  we  want 
to  play  parts  for  which  we  are  more  or  less  unfit,  and 
Marion  Alderling  never  wished  to  play  a  part,  I  was 
sure.  It  would  have  sufficed  her  to  be  herself  wher 
ever  she  was,  and  the  more  people  there  were  by,  the 
more  easily  she  could  have  been  herself. 


186    THOUGH  ONE  ROSE  FROM  THE  DEAD. 

I  am  not  able  to  say  now  how  much  of  all  this  is 
observation  of  previous  facts,  and  how  much  specula 
tion  based  upon  subsequent  occurrences.  At  the  best 
I  can  only  let  it  stand  for  characterization.  In  the 
same  interest  I  will  add  a  fact  in  relation  to  Mrs. 
Alderling  which  ought  to  have  its  weight  against  any 
undue  appeal  I  have  been  making  in  her  behalf. 
Without  in  the  least  blaming  her,  I  will  say  that  I 
think  that  Mrs.  Alderling  ate  too  much.  She  must 
have  had  naturally  a  strong  appetite,  which  her  active 
life  sharpened,  and  its  indulgence  formed  a  sort  of 
refuge  from  the  pressure  of  the  intense  solitude  in 
which  she  lived,  and  which  was  all  the  more  a  solitude 
because  it  was  solitude  a  deux.  I  noticed  that  beyond 
the  habit  of  cooks  she  partook  of  the  dishes  she  had 
prepared,  and  that  after  Alderling  and  I  had  finished 
dinner,  and  he  was  impatient  to  get  at  his  pipe,  she 
remained  prolonging  her  dessert.  One  night,  when 
he  and  I  came  in  from  the  veranda,  she  was  standing 
at  the  sideboard,  bent  over  a  saucer  of  something, 
and  she  made  me  think  of  a  large  tortoise-shell  cat 
which  has  got  at  the  cream.  I  expected  in  my  nerves 
to  hear  her  lap,  and  my  expectation  was  heightened 
by  the  soft,  purring  laugh  with  which  she  owned  that 
she  was  hungry,  and  those  berries  were  so  nice. 


THOUGH  ONE    ROSE  FROM   THE  DEAD.          187 

At  the  risk  of  giving  the  effect  of  something  sensu 
ous,  even  sensual,  in  her,  I  find  myself  insisting  upon 
this  detail,  which  did  not  lessen  her  peculiar  charm. 
As  far  as  the  mystical  quality  of  the  situation  was 
concerned,  I  fancy  your  finding  that  rather  heightened 
by  her  innocent  gourmandise.  You  must  have 
noticed  how  inextricably,  for  this  life  at  least,  the 
spiritual  is  trammeled  in  the  material,  how  personal 
character  and  ancestral  propensity  seem  to  flow  side 
by  side  in  the  same  individual  without  necessarily  af 
fecting  each  other.  On  the  moral  side  Mrs.  Alderling 
was  no  more  to  be  censured  for  the  refuge  which  her 
nerves  sought  from  the  situation  in  over-eating  than 
Alderling  for  the  smoking  in  which  he  escaped  from 
the  pressure  they  both  felt  from  one  another;  and 
she  was  not  less  fitted  than  lie  for  their  joint  ex 
perience. 


V. 

I  DO  not  suppose  it  was  with  the  notion  of  keeping 
her  weight  down  that  Mrs.  Alderling  rowed  a  good 
deal  on  the  cove  before  the  cottage ;  but  she  had  a 
boat,  which  she  managed  very  well,  and  which  she 
was  out  in,  pretty  much  the  whole  time  when  she  was 
not  cooking,  or  eating  or  sleeping,  or  roaming  the 
berry-pastures  with  me,  or  sitting  to  Alderling  for  his 
Madonnas.  He  did  not  care  for  the  water  himself ; 
he  said  he  knew  every  inch  of  that  cove,  and  was  tired 
of  it ;  but  he  rather  liked  his  wife's  going,  and  they 
may  both  have  had  an  unconscious  relief  from  each 
other  in  the  absences  which  her  excursions  promoted. 
She  swam  as  well  as  she  rowed,  and  often  we  saw  her 
going  down  water-proofed  to  the  shore,  where  we 
presently  perceived  her  pulling  off  in  her  bathing- 
dress.  Well  out  in  the  cove  she  had  the  habit  of 
plunging  overboard,  and  after  a  good  swim,  she  rowed 
back,  and  then,  discreetly  water-proofed  again,  she 


THOUGH  ONE  ROSE  FROM  THE  DEAD.    189 

climbed  the  lawn  back  to  the  house.  Now  and  then 
she  took  me  out  in  her  boat,  but  so  far  as  I  remember, 
Alderling  never  went  with  her.  Once  I  ventured  to 
ask  him  if  he  never  felt  anxious  about  her.  He  said 
no,  he  should  not  have  been  afraid  to  go  with  her,  and 
she  could  take  better  care  of  herself  than  he  could. 
Besides,  by  means  of  their  telepathy  they  were  in 
constant  communion,  and  he  could  make  her  feel  at 
any  sort  of  chance,  that  he  did  not  wish  her  to  take 
it,  and  she  would  not.  This  was  the  only  occasion 
when  he  treated  their  peculiar  psychomancy  boastfully, 
and  the  only  occasion  when  I  felt  a  distinct  misgiving 
of  his  sincerity. 

The  day  before  I  left,  Mrs.  Alderling  went  down 
about  eleven  in  the  morning  to  her  boat,  and  rowed 
out  into  the  cove.  She  rowed  far  toward  the  other 
shore,  whither,  following  her  with  my  eyes  from  Ald- 
erling's  window,  I  saw  its  ridge  blotted  out  by  a  long 
low  cloud.  It  was  straight  and  level  as  a  wall,  and 
looked  almost  as  dense,  and  I  called  Alderling. 

"  Oh,  that  fog  won't  come  in  before  afternoon,  "  he 
said.  "  We  usually  get  it  about  four  o'clock.  But 
even  if  it  does,  "  he  added  dreamily,  "  Marion  can 
manage.  I'd  trust  her  anywhere  in  this  cove  in  any 
kind  of  weather. " 


190         THOUGH    ONE  ROSE  FROM  THE  DEAD. 

He  went  back  to  his  work,  and  painted  away  for 
five  or  six  minutes.  Then  he  asked  me,  still  at  the 
window,  "  What's  that  fog  doing  now  ?  " 

"  Well,  I  don't  know,  "  I  answered.  "  I  should 
say  it  was  making  in.  " 

"  Do  you  see  Marion  ? " 

"  Yes,  she  seems  to  be  taking  her  bath.  " 

Again  he  painted  a  while  before  he  asked,  "  Has 
she  had  her  dip  ?  " 

"  She's  getting  back  into  her  boat.  " 

"  All  right, "  said  Alderling,  in  a  tone  of  relief. 
"  She's  good  to  beat  any  fog  in  these  parts  ashore. 
I  wish  you  would  come  and  look  at  this  a  minute.  " 

I  went,  and  we  lost  ourselves  for  a  time  in  our  crit 
icism  of  the  picture.  He  was  harder  on  it  than  I  was. 
He  allowed,  "C'est  un  bon  portrait,  as  the  French  used 
to  say  of  a  faithful  landscape,  though  I  believe  now 
the  portrait  can't  be  too  good  for  them.  I  can't  say 
about  landscape.  But  in  a  Madonna  I  feel  that  there 
can  be  too  much  Marion,  not  for  me,  of  course,  but 
for  the  ideal,  which  I  suppose  we  are  bound  to  re 
spect.  Marion  is  not  spiritual,  but  I  would  not  have 
her  less  of  the  earth  earthy,  for  all  the  angels  that 
ever  spread  themselves  '  in  strong  level  flight. ' ' 

I  recognized  the  words  from  "  The  Blessed  Damo- 


THOUGH  ONE  ROSE  FROM  THE   DEAD.          191 

zel,  "  and  I  made  bold  to  be  so  personal  as  to  say,  "  If 
her  hair  were  a  little  redder  than  '  the  color  of  ripe 
corn  '  one  might  almost  feel  that  the  Blessed  Damozel 
had  been  painted  from  Mrs.  Alderling.  It's  the  lin 
gering  earthiness  in  her  that  makes  the  Damozel  so 
divine.  " 

"  Yes,  that  was  a  great  conception.  I  wonder  none 
of  the  fellows  do  that  kind  of  thing  now.  " 

I  laughed  and  said,  "  Well,  so  few  of  them  have 
had  the  advantage  of  seeing  Mrs.  Alderling.  And 
besides,  Rosettis  don't  happen  every  day.  " 

"  It  was  the  period,  too.  I  always  tell  her  that  she 
belongs  among  the  later  eighteen  sixties.  But  she 
insists  that  she  wasn't  even  born  then.  Marion  is 
tremendously  single-minded.  " 

"  She  has  her  mind  all  on  you.  " 

He  looked  askance  at  me.     "  You've  noticed —  '* 

"  I've  noticed  that  your  mind  is  all  on  her. " 

"  Not  half  as  much  ! "  he  protested,  fervidly.  "  I 
don't  think  it's  good  for  her,  though  of  course  I  like 
it.  That  is,  in  a  way.  Sometimes  it's  rather  too — 
He  suddenly  flung  his  brush  from  him,  and  started 
up,  with  a  loudly  shouted,  u  Yes,  yes  !  I'm  coming,  " 
and  hurled  himself  out  of  the  garret  which  he  used 
for  his  studio,  and  cleared  the  stairs  with  two  bounds. 


192         THOUGH  ONE  KOSE    FROM  THE  DEAD. 

By  the  time  I  reached  the  outer  door  of  the  cottage, 
he  was  a  dark  blur  in  the  white  blur  of  the  fog  which 
had  swallowed  up  the  cove,  and  was  rising  round  the 
house- walls  from  the  grass.  I  heard  him  shouting, 
"  Marion  ! "  and  a  faint  mellow  answer,  far  out  in  the 
cove,  "  Hello  !  "  and  then — 

"  Where  are  you?"  and  her  answer'  "  Here  !  " 
I  heard  him    jump    into  a  boat,  and  the  thump  of 
the  oars  in  the  row-locks,  and  then  the  rapid  beat  of 
the  oars  while  he  shouted,  "  Keep  calling ! "  and  she 
answerd, — 

"  I  will !  "  and  called  "  Hello  !  Hello !  Hello  !  " 
I  made  my  mental  comment  that  this  time  their 
mystical  means  of  communication  was  somehow  not 
working.  But  after  her  last  hello,  no  sound  broke 
the  white  silence  of  the  fog  except  the  throb  of  Al- 
derling's  oars.  She  was  evidently  resting  on  hers,  lest 
she  should  baffle  his  attempts  to  find  her  by  trying  to 
find  him. 

I  suppose  ten  minutes  or  so  had  passed,  when 
the  dense  air  brought  me  the  sound  of  low  laughing 
that  was  also  like  the  sound  of  low  sobbing,  and  then 
I  knew  that  they  had  met  somewhere  in  the  blind 
space.  I  began  to  hear  rowing  again,  but  only  as 
of  one  boat,  and  suddenly  out  of  the  mist,  almost 


THOUGH  ONE  ROSE  FROM  THE  DEAD.    193 

at  my  feet,  Alderling's  boat  shot  up  on  the  shelving 
beach,  and  his  wife  leaped  ashore  from  it,  and  ran 
past  me  up  the  lawn,  while  he  pulled  her  boat  out 
on  the  gravel.  She  must  have  been  trailing  it  from 
the  stern  of  his. 


VI. 

I  WAS  abroad  when  Mrs.  Alderling  died,  but  I  heard 
that  it  was  from  a  typhoid  fever  which  she  had 
contracted  from  the  water  in  their  well,  as  was  sup 
posed.  The  water-supply  all  along  that  coast  is 
scanty,  and  that  summer  most  of  the  wells  were  dry, 
and  quite  a  plague  of  typhoid  raged  among  the  people 
from  drinking  the  dregs.  The  fever  might  have  gone 
the  worse  with  her  because  of  her  over-fed  robust 
ness  ;  at  any  rate  it  went  badly  enough. 

I  first  heard  of  her  death  from  Minver  at  the  club, 
and  I  heard  with  still  greater  astonishment  that  Al 
derling  was  down  there  alone  where  she  had  died. 
Minver  said  that  somebody  ought  to  go  down  and 
look  after  the  poor  old  fellow,  but  nobody  seemed  to 
feel  it  exactly  his  office.  Certainly  I  did  not  feel  it 
mine,  and  I  thought  it  rather  a  hardship  when  a  few 
days  after  I  found  a  letter  from  Alderling  at  the  club 
quite  piteously  beseeching  me  to  come  to  him.  He 


THOUGH    ONE  HOSE   FROM  THE    DEAD.          195 

had  read  of  my  arrival  home,  in  a  stray  New  York 
paper,  and  he  was  firing  his  letter,  he  said,  at  the 
club,  with  one  chance  in  a  thousand  of  hitting  me 
with  it.  Rulledge  was  by  when  I  read  it,  and  he  de 
cided,  with  that  unsparing  activity  of  his,  where  other 
people  are  concerned,  that  I  must  go ;  I  certainly 
could  not  resist  such  an  appeal  as  that.  He  had  a 
vague  impression,  lie  said,  of  something  weird  in  the 
situation  down  there,  and  I  ought  to  go  and  pull 
Alderling  out  of  it ;  besides,  I  might  find  my  account 
in  it  as  a  psychologist.  I  hesitated  a  day,  out  of 
self-respect,  or  self-assertion,  and  then,  the  weather 
coming  on  suddenly  hot,  in  the  beginning  of  Septem 
ber,  I  went. 

Of  course  I  had  meant  to  go,  all  along,  but  I  was 
not  so  glad  when  I  arrived,  as  I  might  have  been  if 
Alderling  had  given  me  a  little  warmer  welcome.  His 
mood  had  changed  since  writing  to  me,  and  the 
strongest  feeling  he  showed  at  seeing  me  was  what 
affected  me  very  like  a  cold  surprise. 

If  I  had  broken  in  on  a  solitude  in  that  place 
before,  I  was  now  the  intruder  upon  a  desolation. 
Alderling  was  living  absolutely  alone,  except  for  the 
occasional  presence  of  a  neighboring  widow — all  the 
middle-aged  women  there  are  widows,  with  dim  or 

13 


196          THOUGH  ONE  ROSE   FROM  THE    DEAD. 

dimmer  memories  of  husbands  lost  off  the  Banks,  or 
elsewhere  at  sea — who  came  in  to  get  his  meals  and 
make  his  bed,  and  then  had  instructions  to  leave.  It 
was  in  one  of  her  prevailing  absences  that  I  arrived 
with  my  bag,  and  I  had  to  hammer  a  long  time  with 
the  knocker  on  the  open  door  before  Alderling  came 
clacking  down  the  stairs  in  his  slippers  from  the  top 
of  the  house,  and  gave  me  his  somewhat  defiant 
greeting.  I  could  almost  have  said  that  he  did  not 
recognize  me  at  the  first  bleared  glance,  and  his 
inability,  when  he  realized  who  it  was,  to  make  me 
feel  at  home,  encouraged  me  to  take  the  affair  into 
my  own  hands. 

He  looked  frightfully  altered,  but  perhaps  it  was 
the  shaggy  beard  that  he  had  let  grow  over  his  poor, 
lean  muzzle,  that  mainly  made  the  difference.  His 
clothes  hung  gauntly  upon  him,  and  he  had  a  weak- 
kneed  stoop.  His  coat  sleeves  were  tattered  at  the 
wrists,  and  one  of  them  showed  the  white  lining  at 
the  elbow.  I  simply  shaddered  at  his  shirt. 

"  Will  you  smoke  ? "  he  asked  huskily,  almost  at 
the  first  word,  and  with  an  effect  of  bewilderment  in 
his  hospitality  that  almost  made  me  shed  tears. 

"Well,  not  just  yet,  Alderling,  "  I  said.  u  Shall 
I  go  to  my  old  room  ? " 


THOUGH  ONE    ROSE  FROM   THE    DEAD.          197 

"  Go  anywhere,  "  he  answered,  and  he  let  me  carry 
my  bag  to  the  chamber  where  I  had  slept  before. 

It  was  quite  as  his  wife  would  have  arranged  it, 
even  to  the  detail  of  a  triangular  portion  of  the  bed 
ding  turned  down  as  she  used  to  do  it  for  me.  The 
place  was  well  aired  and  dusted,  and  gave  me  the 
sense  of  being  as  immaculately  clean  and  fresh  as 
Alderling  was  not.  He  sat  down  in  a  chair  by  the 
window,  and  he  remained,  while  I  laid  out  my  things 
and  made  my  brief  toilet,  unabashed  by  those  in 
cidents  for  which  I  did  not  feel  it  necessary  to  banish 
him,  if  he  liked  staying. 

We  had  supper  by-and-by,  a  very  well-cooked  meal 
of  fried  fresh  cod  and  potatoes,  with  those  belated 
blackberries  which  grow  so  sweet  when  they  hang 
long  on  the  canes  into  September.  There  was  a  third 
plate  laid,  and  I  expected  that  when  the  housekeep 
er  had  put  the  dishes  on  the  table,  she  would  sit 
down  with  us,  as  the  country-fashion  still  is,  but  she 
did  not  reappear  till  she  came  in  with  the  dessert 
and  coffee.  Alderling  ate  hungrily,  and  much  more 
than  I  had  remembered  his  doing,  but  perhaps  I  form 
erly  had  the  impression  of  Mrs.  Alderling's  fine 
appetite  so  strongly  in  mind  that  I  had  failed  to  note 
his.  Certainly,  however,  there  was  a  difference  in 


198    THOUGH  ONE  ROSE  FROM  THE  DEAD. 

one  sort  which  I  could  not  be  mistaken  in,  and  that 
was  in  his  not  talking.  Her  mantle  of  silence  had 
fallen  upon  him,  and  whereas  he  used  hardly  to  give 
me  a  chance  in  the  conversation,  he  now  let  me  do  all 
of  it.  He  scarcely  answered  my  questions,  and  he 
asked  none  of  his  own ;  but  I  saw  that  he  liked  being 
talked  to,  and  I  did  my  best,  shying  off  from  his 
sorrow,  as  people  foolishly  do,  and  speaking  banalities 
about  my  trip  to  Europe,  and  the  Psychological  Con 
gress  in  Geneva,  and  the  fellows  at  the  club,  and 
heaven  knows  what  rot  else. 

He  listened,  but  I  do  not  know  whether  he  heard 
much  of  my  clack,  and  I  got  very  tired  of  it  myself 
at  last.  When  I  had  finished  my  blackberries,  he 
asked  mechanically,  in  an  echo  of  my  former  visit, 
with  a  repetition  of  his  gesture  towards  the  coffee-pot, 
"  More  3"  I  shook  my  head,  and  then  he  led  the  way 
out  to  the  veranda,  stopping  to  get  his  pipe  and 
tobacco  from  the  mantel  on  the  way.  But  when  we 
sat  down  in  the  early  falling  September  twilight  out 
side,  he  did  not  light  his  pipe,  letting  me  smoke  my 
cigarette  alone. 

"  Are  you  off  your  tobacco  ? "  I  asked. 

"  I  don't  smoke, "  he  answered,  but  he  did  not  ex 
plain  why,  and  I  did  not  feel  authorized  to  ask. 


THOUGH    ONE  ROSE  FROM  THE    DEAD.  199 

The  talk  went  on  as  lopsidedly  as  before,  and  I 
began  to  get  sleepy.  I  made  bold  to  yawn,  but  Ald- 
erling  did  not  mind  that,  and  then  I  made  bold  to  say 
that  I  thought  I  would  go  to  bed.  He  followed  me 
indoors,  saying  that  he  would  go  to  bed,  too.  The 
hall  was  lighted  from  a  hanging-lamp  and  two  clear- 
burning  hand-lamps  which  the  widow  had  put  for  us 
on  a  small  table.  She  had  evidently  gone  home,  and 
left  us  to  ourselves.  He  took  one  lamp  and  I  the 
other,  and  he  started  up  stairs  before  me.  If  he  were 
not  coming  down  again,  he  meant  to  let  the  hanging- 
lamp  burn,  and  I  had  nothing  to  say  about  that ;  but 
I  suggested,  concerning  the  wide-open  door  behind 
me,  "Shall  I  close  the  door,  Alderling?"  and  he  an 
swered,  without  looking  round,  "  I  don't  shut  it.  " 

He  led  the  way  into  my  room,  aud  he  sat  down  as 
when  I  had  come,  and  absently  watched  my  processes 
of  getting  into  bed.  There  was  something  droll,  and 
yet  miserable,  in  his  behavior.  At  first,  I  thought 
he  might  be  staying  merely  for  the  comfort  of  a 
human  presence,  and  again,  I  thought  he  might  be 
afraid,  for  I  felt  a  little  creepy  myself,  for  no  as 
signable  reason,  except  that  Absence,  which  he  must 
have  been  incomparably  more  sensible  of  than  I. 
From  certain  ineffectual  movements  that  he  made,  and 


200          THOUGH    ONE  ROSE    FROM  THE  DEAD. 

from  certain  preliminary  noises  in  his  throat,  which 
ended  in  nothing,  I  decided  that  he  wished  to  say 
something  to  me,  tell  me  something,  and  could  not. 
But  I  was  selfishly  sleepy,  and  it  seemed  to  me  that 
anything  he  had  on  his  mind  would  keep  there  till 
morning,  at  least,  and  that  if  he  got  it  off  on  mine 
now,  it  might  give  me  a  night  of  wakeful  speculation. 
So  when  I  got  into  bed  and  pulled  the  sheet  up  under 
rny  chin,  I  said,  "  Well,  I  don't  want  to  turn  you  out, 
old  fellow.  " 

He  stared,  and  answered,  "  Oh  !  "  and  went  without 
other  words,  carrying  his  lamp  with  him  and  moving 
with  a  weak-kneed  shuffle,  like  a  very  old  man. 

He  was  going  to  leave  the  door  open  behind  him, 
but  I  called  out,  "  I  wish  you'd  shut  me  in,  Alder- 
ling,  "  and  after  a  hesitation,  he  came  back  and  closed 
the  door. 


VII. 

WE  breakfasted  as  silently  on  his  part  as  we  had 
supped,  but  when  we  had  finished,  and  I  was  wonder 
ing  what  he  was  going  to  let  me  do  with  myself,  and 
on  the  whole  what  the  deuce  I  Iiad  come  for,  he  said, 
in  the  longest  speech  I  had  yet  had  from  him, 
"  Wouldn't  you  like  to  come  up  and  see  what  I've 
been  doing?  " 

I  said  I  should  like  it  immensely,  and  he  led  the 
way  up  stairs,  as  far  as  his  attic  studio.  The  door  of 
that,  like  the  other  doors  in  the  house,  stood  open, 
and  I  got  the  emotion  which  the  interior  gave  me,  full 
force,  at  the  first  glance.  The  place  was  so  startlingly 
alive  with  that  dead  woman  on  a  score  of  canvases 
in  the  character  in  which  he  had  always  painted  her, 
that  I  could  scarcely  keep  from  calling  out;  but  I 
went  about,  pretending  to  examine  the  several  Ma 
donnas,  and  speaking  rubbish  about  them,  while  he 
stood  stoopingly  in  the  midst  of  them  like  the  little 
withered  old  man  he  looked.  When  I  had  emptied 


202         THOUGH  ONE  ROSE    FROM  THE  DEAD. 

myself  of  my  chaff,  I  perceived  that  the  time  had 
come. 

I  glanced  about  for  a  seat,  and  was  going  to  take 
that  in  which  Mrs.  Alderling  used  to  pose  for  him, 
but  he  called  out  with  sudden  sharpness,  "  Not  that !  " 
and  without  appearing  to  notice,  I  found  a  box  which 
I  inverted,  and  sat  down  on. 

"  Tell  me  about  your  wife,  Alderling, "  I  said,  and 
he  answered  with  a  sort  of  scream,  "  I  wanted  you  to 
ask  me  !  Why  didn't  you  ask  me  before  ?  What 
did  you  suppose  I  got  you  here  for  ? " 

With  that  he  shrank  down,  a  miserable  heap,  in 
his  own  chair,  and  bowed  his  hapless  head  and  cried. 
It  was  more  affecting  than  any  notion  I  can  give  you 
of  it,  and  I  could  only  wait  patiently  for  his  grief  to 
wash  itself  out  in  one  of  those  paroxysms  which  come 
to  bereavement  and  leave  it  somehow  a  little  comfort 
ed  when  they  pass. 

"I  was  waiting,  for  the  stupid  reasons  you  will 
imagine,  to  let  you  speak  first,  "  I  said,  "  but  here  in 
her  presence  I  couldn't  hold  in  any  longer.  " 

He  asked  with  strange  eagerness,  "  You  noticed 
that?" 

I  chose  to  feign  that  he  meant  in  the  pictures. 
"  Over  and  over  again,  "  I  answered. 


THOUGH  ONE  HOSE  FROM  THE   DEAD.          203 

He  would  not  have  my  feint.  "  I  don't  mean  in 
these  wretched  caricatures !  " 

"  Well  ? "  I  assented  provisionally. 

"  I  mean  her  very  self,  listening,  looking,  living — 
waiting ! " 

Whether  I  had  insanity  or  sorrow  to  deal  with,  I 
could  not  gainsay  the  unhappy  man,  and  I  only  said 
what  I  really  felt :  "  Yes,  the  place  seems  strangely 
full  of  her.  I  wish  you  would  tell  me  about  her. " 

He  asked,  with  a  certain  slyness,  "  Have  you  heard 
anything  about  her  already?  At  the  club?  From 
that  fool  woman  in  the  kitchen  ? " 

"  For  heaven's  sake,  no,  Alderling !  " 

"  Or  about  me  ? " 

"  Nothing  whatever !  " 

He  seemed  relieved  of  whatever  suspicion  he  felt, 
but  he  said  finally,  and  with  an  air  of  precaution,  "  I 
should  like  to  know  just  how  much  you  mean  by  the 
place  seeming  full  of  her. " 

"  Oh,  I  suppose  the  association  of  her  personality 
with  the  whole  house,  and  especially  this  room.  I 
didn't  mean  anything  preternatural,  I  believe.  " 

"  Then  you  don't  believe  in  a  life  after  death  ?"  he 
demanded  with  a  kind  of  defiance. 

I  thought  this  rather  droll,  seeing  what  his  own 


204    THOUGH  ONE  ROSE  FROM  THE  DEAD. 

position  had  been,  but  that  was  not  the  moment  for 
the  expression  of  my  amusement.  "  The  tendency  is 
to  a  greater  tolerance  of  the  notion, "  I  said.  "  Men 
like  James  and  Royce,  among  the  psychologists,  and 
Shaler,  among  the  scientists,  scarcely  leave  us  at 
peace  in  our  doubts,  any  more,  much  less  our  denials.  " 

He  said,  as  if  he  had  forgotten  the  question  :  "  They 
called  it  a  very  light  case,  and  they  thought  she  was 
getting  well.  In  fact,  she  did  get  well,  and  then — 
there  was  a  relapse.  They  laid  it  to  her  eating  some 
fruit  which  they  allowed  her.  " 

Alderling  spoke  with  a  kind  of  bitter  patience,  but 
in  my  own  mind  I  was  not  able  to  put  all  the  blame 
on  the  doctors.  Neither  did  I  blame  that  innocently 
earthy  creature,  who  was  of  no  more  harm  in  her 
strong  appetite  than  any  other  creature  which  gluts 
its  craving  as  simply  as  it  feels  it.  The  sense  of  her 
presence  was  deepened  by  the  fact  of  those  childlike 
self-indulgences  which  Alderling's  words  recalled  to 
me.  I  made  no  comment,  however,  and  he  asked 
gloomily,  as  if  with  a  return  of  his  suspicion,  "  And 
you  haven't  heard  of  anything  happening  afterward  ? " 

"  I  don't  know  what  you  refer  to,  "  I  told  him, 
"  but  I  can  safely  say  I  haven't,  for  I  haven't  heard 
anything  at  all. " 


THOUGH    ONE    ROSE    FROM  THE  DEAD.          205 

"  They  contended  that  it  didn't  happen, "  he  re 
sumed.  "  She  died,  they  said,  and-  by  all  the  tests 
she  had  been  dead  two  whole  days.  She  died  with 
her  hand  in  mine.  I  was  not  trying  to  hold  her  back ; 
she  had  a  kind  of  majestic  preoccupation  in  her  going, 
so  that  I  would  not  have  dared  to  detain  her  if  I 
could.  You've  seen  them  go,  and  how  they  seem  to 
draw  those  last,  long,  deep  breaths,  as  if  they  had  no 
thought  in  the  world  but  of  the  work  of  getting  out 
of  it.  When  her  breathing  stopped  I  expected  it  to 
go  on,  but  it  did  not  go  on,  and  that  was  all.  Noth 
ing  startling,  nothing  dramatic,  just  simple,  natural, 
like  her!  I  gave  her  hand  back,  I  put  it  on  her 
breast  myself,  and  crossed  the  other  on  it.  She  looked 
as  if  she  were  sleeping,  with  that  faint  color  hovering 
in  her  face,  which  was  not  wasted,  but  I  did  not  make- 
believe  about  it;  I  accepted  the  fact  of  her  death. 
In  your  '  Quests  of  the  Occult, ' "  Alderling  broke  off, 
with  a  kind  of  superiority  that  was  of  almost  the 
quality  of  contempt,  "  I  believe  you  don't  allow  your 
self  to  be  daunted  by  a  diametrical  difference  of 
opinion  among  the  witnesses  of  an  occurrence,  as  to 
its  nature,  or  as  to  its  reality,  even  ? " 

"  Not  exactly  that, "  I  said.  "  I  think  I  argued 
that  the  passive  negation  of  one  witness  ought  not  to 


206    THOUGH  ONE  HOSE  FROM  THE  DEAD 

invalidate  the  testimony  of  another  as  to  his  ex 
perience.  One  might  hear  and  see  things,  and  strongly 
affirm  them,  and  another,  absorbed  in  something  else, 
or  in  a  mere  suspense  of  the  observant  faculties,  might 
quite  as  honestly  declare  that  so  far  as  his  own 
knowledge  was  concerned,  nothing  of  the  kind  hap 
pened.  I  held  that  in  such  a  case,  counter-testimony 
should  not  be  allowed  to  invalidate  the  testimony  for 
the  fact. " 

"  Yes,  that  is  what  I  meant,  "  said  Alderling.  "  You 
say  it  more  clearly  in  the  book,  though.  " 

"Oh,  of  course." 


VIII. 

He  began  again,  more  remotely  from  the  affair  in 
hand  than  he  had  left  off,  as  if  he  wanted  to  give 
himself  room  for  parley  with  my  possible  incredulity. 
"  You  know  how  it  was  with  Marion  about  my  not 
believing  that  I  should  live  again.  Her  notion  was  a 
sort  of  joke  between  us,  especially  when  others  were 
by,  but  it  was  a  serious  thing  with  her,  in  her  heart. 
Perhaps  it  had  originally  come  to  her  as  a  mere  fancy, 
and  from  entertaining  it  playfully,  she  found  herself 
with  a  mental  inmate  that  finally  dispossessed  her 
judgment.  You  remember  how  literally  she  brought 
those  Scripture  texts  to  bear  on  it?" 

"  Yes.  May  I  say  that  it  was  very  affecting  ? " 
"  Affecting  1 "  Alderling  repeated  in  a  tone  of  amaze 
at  the  inadequacy  of  my  .epithet.  "  She  was  always 
finding  things  that  bore  upon  the  point.  After  awhile 
she  got  to  concealing  them,  as  if  she  thought  they 
annoyed  me.  They  never  did ;  they  amused  me ;  and 


208         THOUGH  ONE  ROSE    FROM  THE    DEAD. 

when  I  saw  that  she  had  something  of  the  sort  on  her 
mind,  I   would   say,  *  Well,    out   with    it,  Marion  ! ' 
She  would  always  begin,  '  Well,  you  may  laugh  ! ' ' 
and  as  he  repeated  her  words  Alderling  did  laugh, 
forlornly,  and  as  I  must  say,  rather  bloodcurdlingiy. 

I  could  not  prompt  him  to  go  on,  but  he  presently 
did  so  himself,  desolately  enough.  "  I  suppose,  if  I 
was  in  her  mind  at  all  in  that  supreme  moment,  when 
she  seemed  to  be  leaving  this  life  behind  with  such  a 
solemn  effect  of  rating  it  at  nothing,  it  may  have  been 
a  pang  to  her  that  I  was  not  following  her  into  the 
dark,  with  any  ray  of  hope  for  either  of  us.  She 
could  not  have  returned  from  it  with  the  expectation 
of  convincing  me,  for  I  used  to  tell  her  that  if  one 
came  back  from  the  dead,  I  should  merely  know  that 
he  had  been  mistaken  about  being  dead,  and  was  giv 
ing  me  a  dream  from  his  trance.  She  once  asked  me 
if  I  thought  Lazarus  was  not  really  dead,  with  a 
curious  childlike  interest  in  the  miracle,  and  she  was 
disheartened  when  I  reminded  her  that  Lazarus  had 
not  testified  of  any  life  hereafter,  and  it  did  not  mat 
ter  whether  he  had  been  really  dead  or  not  when  he 
was  resuscitated,  as  far  as  that  was  concerned.  Last 
year,  we  read  the  Bible  a  good  deal  together  here,  and 
to  tease  her  I  pretended  to  be  convinced  of  the  con- 


THOUGH    ONE   ROSE    FROM  THE  DEAD  209 

trary  by  the  very  passages  that  persuaded  her.  As 
she  told  you,  she  did  not  care  for  herself.  You 
remember  that  ? " 

"  Distinctly,  "  I  said. 

"  It  was  always  so.  She  never  cared.  I  was  per 
fectly  aware  that  if  she  could  have  assured  life 
hereafter  to  me,  she  would  have  given  her  life  here  to 
do  it.  You  know  how  some  women,  when  they  are 
married,  absolutely  give  themselves  up,  try  to  lose 
themselves  in  the  behoof  of  their  husbands  1  I  don't 
say  it  rightly ;  there  are  no  words  that  will  express 
the  utterness  of  their  abdication.  " 

"  I  know  what  you  mean,  "  I  said,  "  and  it  was  one 
of  the  facts  which  most  interested  me  in  Mrs.  Al- 
derling.  " 

"  Because  I  wasn't  worthy  of  it  ?     No  man  is ! " 

"  It  wasn't  a  question  of  that  in  my  mind ;  I  don't 
believe  that  occurred  to  me.  It  was  the  Ding  an  sick 
that  interested  me,  or  as  it  related  itself  to  her,  and 
not  the  least  as  it  related  itself  to  you.  Such  a 
woman's  being  is  a  cycle  of  self-sacrifice,  so  perfect, 
so  essential,  from  birth  to  death,  as  to  exclude  the 
notion  of  volition.  She  is  what  she  does.  Of  course 
she  has  to  put  her  sacrifice  into  words  from  time  to 
time,  but  its  true  language  is  acts,  and  the  acts  them- 


210          THOUGH  ONE    ROSE  FROM  THE    DEAD. 

selves  only  clumsily  express  it.  There  is  a  kind  of 
tyranny  in  it  for  the  man,  of  course.  It  requires 
self-sacrifice  to  be  sacrificed  to,  and  I  don't  suppose  a 
woman  has  any  particular  merit  in  what  is  so  purely 
natural.  It  appears  pathetic  when  it  is  met  with  in 
gratitude  or  rejection,  but  when  it  has  its  way  it  is  no 
more  deserving  our  reverence  than  eating  or  sleeping. 
It  astonishes  men  because  they  are  as  naturally 
incapable  of  it  as  women  are  capable  of  it.  " 

I  was  mounted  and  was  riding  on,  forgetful  of  Al- 
derling,  and  what  he  had  to  tell  me,  if  he  had 
anything,  but  he  recalled  me  to  myself  by  having 
apparently  forgotten  me,  for  when  I  paused,  he  took 
up  his  affair  at  a  quite  different  point,  and  as  though 
that  were  the  question  in  hand. 

"  That  gift,  or  knack,  or  trick,  or  whatever  it  was, 
of  one  compelling  the  presence  of  the  other  by  think 
ing  or  willing  it,  was  as  much  mine  as  hers,  and  she 
tried  sometimes  to  get  me  to  say  that  I  would  use  it 
with  her  if  she  died  before  I  did ;  and  if  she  were 
where  the  conditions  were  opposed  to  her  coming  to 
me,  my  will  would  help  her  to  overcome  the  hinder- 
ance ;  our  united  wills  would  form  a  current  of  volition 
that  she  could  travel  back  on  against  all  obstacles.  I 
don't  know  whether  I  make  myself  clear  ? "  he  appealed. 


THOUGH  ONE  ROSE  FROM  THE  DEAD.    211 

"  Yes,  perfectly, "  I  said.  "  It  is  very  curious.  " 
He  said  in  a  kind  of  muse,  "  I  don't  know  just 
where  I  was.  "  Then  he  began  again,  "  Oh,  yes  !  It 
was  at  the  ceremony — down  there  in  the  library. 
Some  of  the  country  people  came  in ;  I  suppose  they 
thought  they  ought,  and  I  suppose  they  wanted  to ; 
it  didn't  matter  to  me.  I  had  sent  for  Doctor  Norrey, 
as  soon  as  the  relapse  came,  and  he  wTas  there  with 
me.  Of  course  there  was  the  minister,  conducting 
the  services.  He  made  a  prayer  full  of  helpless  rep 
etitions,  which  I  helplessly  noticed,  and  some 
scrambling  remarks,  mostly  misdirected  at  me,  affirm 
ing  and  reaffirming  that  the  sister  they  had  lost  was 
only  gone  before,  and  that  she  was  now  in  a  happier 
world. 

"  The  singing  and  the  praying  and  the  preaching 
came  to  an  end,  and  then  there  was  that  soul-sicken 
ing  hush,  that  exanimate  silence,  of  which  the  noise 
of  rustling  clothes  and  scraping  feet  formed  a  part, 
as  the  people  rose  in  the  hall,  where  chairs  had  been 
put  for  them,  leaving  me  and  Norrey  alone  with 
Marion.  Every  fibre  of  my  frame  recognized  the 
moment  of  parting,  and  protested.  A  tremendous 
wave  of  will  swept  through  me  and  from  me,  a  resist 
less  demand  for  her  presence,  and  it  had  power  upon 
u 


212    THOUGH  ONE  ROSE  FROM  THE  DEAD. 

her.  I  heard  her  speak,  and  say,  as  distinctly  as  I 
repeat  the  words,  '  I  will  come  for  you ! '  and  the 
youth  and  the  beauty  that  had  been  growing  more 
and  more  wonderful  in  her  face,  ever  since  she  died, 
shone  like  a  kind  of  light  from  it.  I  answered  her, 
'  I  am  ready  now  ! 7  and  then  Norrey  scuffled  to  his 
feet,  with  a  conventional  face  of  sympathy,  and  said, 
'  No  hurry,  my  dear  Alderling,  '  and  I  knew  he  had 
not  heard  or  seen  anything,  as  well  as  I  did  afterwards 
when  I  questioned  him.  lie  thought  I  was  giving 
them  notice  that  they  could  take  her  away.  What 
do  you  think?" 

"  How  what  do  I  think  ?  "  I  asked. 

"  Do  you  think  that  it  happened  ? " 

There  was  something  in  Alderling's  tone  and  man 
ner  that  made  me,  instead  of  answering  directly  that 
I  did  not,  temporize  and  ask,  "  Why  ?  " 

"  Because — because, "  and  Alderling  caught  his 
breath,  like  a  child  that  is  trying  to  keep  itself  from 
crying,  "  because  /  don't.  "  He  broke  into  a  sobbing 
that  seemed  to  wrench  and  tear  his  poor  little  body, 
arid  if  I  had  thought  of  anything  to  say,  I  could  not 
have  said  it  to  his  headlong  grief  with  any  hope  of 
assuaging  it.  "I  am  satisfied  now, "  he  said,  at  last, 
wiping  his  wet  face,  and  striving  for  some  composure 


THOUGH    ONE    ROSE  FROM  THE  DEAD  213 

of  its  trembling  features,  "  that  it  was  all  a  delusion, 
the  effect  of  my  exaltation,  of  my  momentary  aberra 
tion,  perhaps.  Don't  be  afraid  of  saying  what  you 
really  think,  "  he  added  scornfully,  "  with  the  notion 
of  sparing  me.  You  couldn't  doubt  it,  or  deny  it, 
more  completely  than  I  do.  " 

I  confess  this  unexpected  turn  struck  me  dumb. 
I  did  not  try  to  say  anything,  and  Alderling  went  on. 

"  I  don't  deny  that  she  is  living,  but  I  can't  believe 
that  I  shall  ever  live  to  see  her  again,  or  if  you  prefer, 
die  to  see  her.  There  is  the  play  of  the  poor  animal 
instinct,  or  the  mechanical  persistence  of  expectation 
in  me,  so  that  I  can't  shut  the  doors  without  the  sense 
of  shutting  he,r  out,  can't  put  out  the  lights  without 
feeling  that  I  am  leaving  her  in  the  dark.  But  I 
know  it  is  all  foolishness,  as  well  as  you  do,  all  crazi- 
ness.  If  she  is  alive  it  is  because  she  believed  she 
should  live,  and  I  shall  perish  because  I  didn't  believe. 
I  should  like  to  believe,  now,  if  only  to  see  her  again, 
but  it  is  too  late.  If  you  disuse  any  member  of  your 
body,  or  any  faculty  of  your  mind,  it  withers  away 
and  if  you  deny  your  soul  your  soul  ceases  to  be.  " 

I  found  myself  saying,  "  That  is  very  interesting,  " 
from  a  certain  force  of  habit,  which  you  have  noted 
in  me,  when  confronted  with  a  novel  instance  of  any 


214          THOUGH  ONE    ROSE   FROM  THE    DEAD. 

kind.  "  But,  "  I  suggested,  "  why  not  act  upon  the 
reverse  of  that  principle,  and  create  the  fact  by  affirm 
ation  which  you  think  your  denial  destroys  ? " 

"  Because, "  he  repeated  wearily,  "  it  is  too  late. 
You  might  as  well  ask  the  fakir  who  has  held  his  arm 
upright  for  twenty  years,  till  it  has  stiffened  there,  to 
restore  the  dry  stock  by  exercise.  It  it  is  too  late,  I 
tell  you.  " 

"  But,  look  here,  Alderling, "  I  pursued,  beginning 
to  taste  the  joy  of  argument.  "  You  say  that  your 
will  had  such  power  upon  her  after  you  knew  her  to 
be  dead  that  you  made  her  speak  to  you  ?  " 

"  No,  I  don't  say  that  now, "  he  returned.  "  I 
know  now  that  it  was  a  delusion.  " 

"But  if  you  once  had  that  power  of  summoning 
her  to  you,  by  strongly  wishing  for  her  presence, 
when  you  were  both  living  here,  why  doesn't  it  stand 
to  reason  that  you  could  do  it  still,  if  she  is  living 
there  and  you  are  living  here  ? " 

"  I  never  had  any  such  power, "  he  replied,  with 
the  calm  of  absolute  tragedy.  "  That  was  a  delusion 
too.  I  leave  the  doors  open  for  her,  night  and  day, 
because  I  must,  but  if  she  came  I  should  know  it  was 
not  she. " 


IX. 

OF  course  you  know  your  own  business,  my  dear 
Acton,  but  if  you  think  of  using  the  story  of  the  Al- 
derlings — and  there  is  no  reason  why  you  should  not, 
for  they  are  both  dead,  without  kith  or  kin  surviving, 
so  far  as  I  know,  unless  he  has  some  relatives  in 
Germany,  who  would  never  penetrate  the  disguise  you 
could  give  the  case — it  seems  to  me  that  here  is  your 
true  climax.  But  I  necessarily  leave  the  matter  to 
you,  for  I  shall  not  touch  it  at  any  point  where  we 
could  come  into  competition.  In  fact,  I  doubt  if  I 
ever  touch  it  at  all,  for  though  all  psychology  is  in  a 
manner  dealing  with  the  occult,  still  I  think  I  have 
done  my  duty  by  that  side  of  it,  as  the  occult  is 
usually  understood ;  and  I  am  shy  of  its  grosser  in 
stances,  as  things  that  are  apt  to  bring  one's  scientific 
poise  into  question.  However,  you  shall  be  the  judge 
of  what  is  best  for  you  to  do,  when  you  have  the 
whole  story,  and  I  will  give  it  you  without  more  ado, 


216    THOUGH  ONE  ROSE  FROM  THE  DEAD. 

merely  premising  that  I  have  a  sort  of  shame  for  the 
aptness  of  the  catastrophe.  I  shall  respect  you  more 
if  I  hear  that  you  agree  with  me  as  to  the  true  climax 
of  the  tragedy,  and  have  the  heroism  to  reject  the 
final  event. 

I  stayed  with  Alderling  nearly  a  week,  and  I  will 
own  that  I  bored  myself.  In  fact,  I  am  not  sure  but 
we  bored  each  other.  At  any  rate,  when  I  told  him, 
the  night  before  I  intended  going,  that  I  meant  to 
leave  him  in  the  morning,  he  seemed  resigned,  or  in 
different,  or  perhaps  merely  inattentive.  From  time 
to  time  we  had  recurred  to  the  matter  of  his  ex 
perience,  or  his  delusion,  but  with  apparently  increas 
ing  impatience  on  his  part,  and  certainly  decreasing 
interest  on  mine ;  so  that  at  last  I  think  he  was  willing 
to  have  me  go.  But  in  the  morning  he  seemed  re 
luctant,  and  pleaded  with  me  to  stay  a  few  days 
longer  with  him.  I  alleged  engagements,  more  or  less 
unreal,  for  I  was  never  on  such  terms  with  Alderling 
that  I  felt  I  need  make  any  special  sacrifice  to  him. 
He  gave  way,  suspiciously,  rather,  and  when  I  came 
down  from  my  room  after  having  put  the  last  touches 
to  my  packing,  I  found  him  on  the  veranda  looking 
out  to  seaward,  where  a  heavy  fog-bank  hung. 


THOUGH  ONE  ROSE  FROM  THE  DEAD.    217 

You  will  sense  here  the  sort  of  patness  which  I  feel 
cheapens  the  catastrophe ;  and  yet,  as  I  consider  it, 
again,  the  fact  is  not  without  its  curious  importance, 
and  its  bearing  upon  what  went  before.  I  do  not 
know  but  it  gives  the  whole  affair  a  relief  which  it 
would  not  otherwise  have. 

He  was  to  have  driven  me  to  the  station,  some 
miles  away,  before  noon,  and  I  supposed  we  should 
sit  down  together,  and  try  to  have  some  sort  of  talk 
before  I  went.  But  Alderling  appeared  to  have  for 
gotten  about  my  going,  and  after  a  while,  took  himself 
off  to  his  studio,  and  left  me  alone  to  watch  the  in 
roads  of  the  fog.  It  came  on  over  the  harbor  rapidly, 
as  on  that  morning  when  Mrs.  Alderling  had  been  so 
nearly  lost  in  it,  and  presently  the  masts  and  shrouds 
of  the  shipping  at  anchor  were  sticking  up  out  of  it 
as  if  they  were  sunk  into  a  body  as  dense  as  the  sea 
under  them. 

I  amused  myself  watching  it  blot  out  one  detail 
of  the  prospect  after  another,  while  the  fog-horn  lowed 
through  it,  and  the  bell-buoy,  far  out  beyond  the 
light-house  ledge,  tolled  mournfully.  The  milk-white 
mass  moved  landward,  and  soon  the  air  was  blind 
with  the  mist  which  hid  the  grass  twenty  yards  away. 
There  was  an  awf  ulness  in  the  silence,  which  nothing 


218          THOUGH    ONE   ROSE  FROM   THE  DEAD. 

broke  but  the  lowing  of  the  horn,  and  the  tolling  of 
the  bell,  except  when  now  and  then  the  voice  of  a 
sailor  came  through  it,  like  that  of  some  drowned 
man  sending  up  his  hail  from  the  bottom  of  the  bay. 

Suddenly  I  heard  a  joyful  shout  from  the  attic 
overhead : 

"  I  am  .coming  !     I  am  coming !  " 

It  was  Alderling  calling  out  through  his  window, 
and  then  a  cry  came  from  over  the  water,  which 
seemed  to  answer  him,  but  which  there  is  no  rea 
son  in  the  world  to  believe  was  not  a  girlish  shout 
from  one  of  the  yachts,  swallowed  up  in  the  fog. 

His  lunging  descent  of  the  successive  stairways  fol 
lowed,  and  he  burst  through  the  doorway  beside  me, 
and  without  heeding  me,  ran  bareheaded  down  the 
sloping  lawn. 

I  followed,  with  what  notion  of  help  or  hinderance 
I  should  not  find  it  easy  to  say,  but  before  I  reached 
the  water's  edge — in  fact  I  never  did  reach  it,  and 
had  some  difficulty  making  my  way  back  to  the 
house, — I  heard  the  rapid  throb  of  the  oars  in  the 
row-locks  as  he  pulled  through  the  white  opacity. 

You  know  the  rest,  for  it  was  the  common  proper 
ty  of  our  enterprising  press  at  the  time,  when  the 
incident  was  fully  reported,  with  my  ineffectual  efforts 


THOUGH  ONE  ROSE  FROM  THE  DEAD.    219 

to  be    satisfactorily    interviewed  as  to  the  nothing 
I  knew. 

The  oarless  boat  was  found  floating  far  out  to  sea 
after  the  fog  lifted.  It  was  useless  to  look  for  Ald- 
erling's  body,  and  I  do  not  know  that  any  search 
was  made  for  it. 


THE    END. 


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prepaid,  to  any  part  of  the  United  States,  Canada, 
jr  Mexico,  on  receipt  of  the  price. 


FA     T.TRRARV 


RETURN     CIRCULATION  DEPARTMENT 

202  Main  Library 


LOAN  PERIOD  1 

HOME  USE 

2 

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ALL  BOOKS  MAY  BE  RECALLED  AFTER  7  DAYS 

Renewals  and  Recharges  may  be  made  4  days  prior  to  the  due  date. 

Books  may  be  Renewed  by  calling     642-3405. 

DUE  AS  STAMPED  BELOW 


m  ITW 

FEBJZ 

^  ynm 

AUTO  DISC  CIRC  DEI 

)09'92 

t-VUJ 

OCT  021993 

1 

DEC  17  1993 

W     : 

Tv^H 

'*fi  h 

RECEIVED 

SEP  1       1994 

CIRCULATION  DEPT 

FORM  NO.  DD6, 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA,  BERKELEY 
BERKELEY,  CA  94720 


U.  C.  BERKELEY  LIBRARIES 


154764 


